mere tyro in biology knows that the connective tissues, such as fibrous tissue, cartilage, bone, etc., under special conditions of growth may be substituted for each other, and that teeth and horn are but dermal additions capable of replacing each other. Thus the epithelial lining of the mouth becomes thickened and hard in persons who have lost their teeth, and in the cow and the sheep the front part of the upper jaw, which is devoid of teeth, has a horny epithelial pad instead. Horny substitutes for teeth are also to be met with in the dugong, the duck-billed platypus, and the lamprey. In the whalebone whales this kind of substitution attains its maximum. The excessive growth of fibrous horny plates, or baleen, in the mouth, serving as a strainer to retain the minute mollusks on which the whale feeds, interrupts the development of teeth, which are but temporary appendages. There is no more reason to imagine a predecessor of the whale with teeth and without baleen than to suppose that a dermoid cystic tumor in man, containing hair, bone, and teeth, represents a preanthropoid condition.

The industry and acumen of Darwin have greatly multiplied instances of race variation by adaptation to environment, as well as numerous metamorphoses of individuals of the same species; yet many considerations show that such instances do not and cannot disprove specific and original differences among living things. Such differences preclude the possibility of gradual development from one another.

The existence of structures totally distinct from all others makes against evolution. Among such structures are the arrangement of the leaf of Venus, or fly-trap, and other insectivorous plants; the feathery disks on the shoulders of the male dytiscus beetle; the lasso-cells of jelly-fish, etc.; structures which stand alone, having nothing resembling them from which they could have been evolved, and evolving nothing.

The very different biological elements often occurring among animals which are closely related to each other by external forms and habits show an inherent and essential difference between them. Thus the blood of the guinea-pig crystallizes in tetrahedra, that of the squirrel in six-sided plates, and that of the rat in octohedra. The biological differences among animals and vegetables are very numerous, and many of them can have no relation to any theory of natural selection whatever.

Some of the most perfect and complicate structures known occur in primitive forms of life, as the peculiar teeth of the seaurchin, more complicate than any other masticatory apparatus known; or the system of water vessels and retractile feet in the same organism. Such facts are crucial against evolution.

Sometimes different structures serve similar ends. Thus the teeth in mollusks are long internal ribbons set with spines and claws; in infusoria they are like an anvil and hammers; in crustacea and insects, grinding mills in the stomach; and in higher animals organs of prehension as well as comminution. Such complete distinction of structure and function have no possible connection. They were never evolved from each other. They were created and purposely adapted to their ends. They are monumental illustrations of a creative intelligence which has wisely though variously connected means to ends.

If the theory of natural selection really showed the divine. method of creation it would be plainly indicated by the plants growing upon a mountain side. Such a place is the most appropriate in the world for testing this theory, because of the gradual change of climate and environment. If any transitional forms ever existed among species we may reasonably expect to find them here. But the alpine species make their appearance and those of the plains disappear suddenly at particular elevations, and we find no transitional varieties.

The methods of divine creation may be greatly varied, and such variations will more clearly indicate the presence of intelligent will than any uniform method, or continuity of material, can do. Principal Dawson says:

The

It is curious that the Bible suggests three methods in which new organisms may be, and according to it have been, introduced by the Creator. The first is that of immediate and direct creation, as when God created the great tanninim (whales). second is that of mediate creation, through the materials previously existing, as when he said, Let the land bring forth plants, or, Let the waters bring forth animals. The third is, that of production from a previous organism by power other than that of ordinary reproduction, as in the origination of Eve from Adam, and the miraculous conception of Jesus.

In every instance, however, and in every method possible, each individual or thing brought into being is brought and continues in being by the constant presence of creative power.

The corporeity of God has been held by pagans as well as by childish or thoughtless theists, and it is taught by the Mormons as an article of faith; but the Bible teaches that God is a Spirit, and must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. It declares that he is independent of the universe, both of matter and mind. He can exist without the universe, for he existed before it. He is necessary to its existence. He brought it into being. It is the result of his sovereign will. To God belongeth power-all power in heaven and earth, spiritual and material. Modern astronomy shows us stars whose light has traveled millions of years to reach our earth; and if they were millions of times more distant that would not militate against the scriptural view of creation. They began, sometime, to be, and whatever begins is not self-existent but created.

The true idea of creation implies the presence of God's power and will-which is the same thing as God himself-not only in bringing into being the forms and elementary essences of things and endowing them with certain qualities, but in continuing them in being and activity. "In him all things consist.' As all things exist by his will he is transcendently above all things, and by no means to be confounded with his work. We attribute personality to him, not in the sense of limitation, since we regard him as infinite, but as a living, conscious, intelligent, voluntary Being, the only self-existent and eternal Being, and the fountain and sustainer of all existence and life.

Since the divine Being is essential to all being the idea of creation applies to the flower made yesterday as well as to the stars of myriads of ages ago. The union of oxygen and hydrogen gases in a chemist's laboratory produces water, but that particular water was not in existence before. It was then produced. The cause of its being was not in itself, for it had no previous being. As to the causative power of the elementary gases, they can have none of themselves, since they too were created. The term "second causes" is a misnomer, if it means that they are originally effective in themselves. We may regard them as conditions, or modes, of action; conduits or channels of power or force; but the power itself belongs to God. It is creative power. It is an unproved conceit of some physicists, based upon atheistic philosophy, that the quantity of matter in the universe can neither be enlarged nor diminished,

but only transformed. For aught we know God is continually creating both elements and forms. A few years ago a new star appeared in the nebula of Andromeda, and gradually faded away. No astronomical data can prove that it was not a temporary addition to the universe; and the same is true of many similar phenomena. It will be a blessed era for humanity when the pursuit of truth shall be no longer hindered by theories substituted for facts in so-called scientific text-books.

Trinitarian believers in the Bible hold that it teaches an essential plurality in the divine nature, and ascribes creation alike to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the divine humanity of Jesus God was exhibited to our race in a most striking manner. He is also exhibited to intelligence in the works of creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." But Christ is "the brightness of his [Father's] glory, and the express image of his person." Not without meaning did the angels sing "Glory to God in the highest " when Jesus was born, for in him dwelt "the fullness of the Godhead bodily." As the pre-existent Son of God he was the revealer of the divine will-the eternal Word-and as the Word made flesh he manifests God to man in the highest degree of which our nature is capable.

The triune loving nature of God is a sufficient reply to those who regard the eternity before "the beginning" as a period of awful silence and inactivity wholly inconceivable. The divine nature is never inactive nor unconscious. In the plurality of persons we see both the subject and the object of eternal thought and eternal love. Eternally active, self-existing, and self-sufficing, the external creation was not necessary to God; but in the fullness of infinite love, which must ever be irradiant and outflowing to all possibilities of being, the eternal potentiality of creation became a reality. Wisely, therefore, does the Bible begin by asserting what no science can contradict and what all nature testifies to, that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

H. My the

ART. V.-ABANDONED ARCHIVES OF KHU-EN-ATEN. AMENOPHIS IV., of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, was the son of Amenophis III. by a princess Teie, who is thought to have been an Asiatic, perhaps of Semitic race. He married Tadukhepa, the daughter of Duisratta or Dusratta, the king of Mitanni or Nahrina, the Aram-Naharaim of Judges iii, 8, a district of Mesopotamia opposite the old Hittite capital and commercial metropolis Carchemish, of which Chushan-rishathaim was king. After his accession to the throne, Amenophis IV. invited to his court men of influence and ability both of Mitannian and Canaanitish extraction, and made them his chief officers and advisers. He also professed himself a convert to the relig, ious faith of his wife and mother, and endeavored to force this upon his unwilling subjects. This religion was a kind of monotheism, the adoration of Aten, the solar disk. His name containing, as its first element, the name of the god Amon, he assumed the new name Khu-en-aten, and this would ever forcibly proclaim the radical change in his religious views and practices. But this well-meant effort at religious reformation was met with powerful opposition, and resulted in an irremediable rupture with the ancient and influential priesthood of Thebes. Khu-enaten being compelled to abandon his old capital, formed a new one, and located his new city on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minieh and Siout, where are now to be found the extensive ruins of Tel el-Amarna. The new city had but a brief existence. On the death of Khu-en-aten the smoldering fires of rebellion burst forth, his dynasty came to an end, the kingdom was united under an acknowledged leader, the old religion was restored, the strangers were dismissed from the court, and the new capital was abandoned and deserted. But upon the return of the government to Thebes a portion of the royal archives were left behind, and in the winter of 1887-88 several hundred clay tablets were brought to light. The inscriptions are in the cuneiform characters and the Babylonian language. They consist of dispatches from the governors of provinces and dependencies in Syria and other countries of western Asia.

These tablets are being studied by specialists, and, though we