Then secondly we can see purpose in the universe. We have seen power in the world, not uncontrolled and haphazard, but orderly. Man knows but little about it yet he has worked out certain laws according to which natural forces seem to function and the further he has examined, the further he has seen the correlation of force and its obedience to the modes which he has observed. Force in the universe and restrained and ordered force infers a powerful being behind it leads a step further for definite order presupposes purpose.
There are many other indications, however, as for example, evolution. Scientists claim: that some form of evolution is the only explanation of the world of nature -and they tell us that the life history of the individual-is a picture of the history of the whole class, and we have a clear example in biology.
Biologists tell us that if one examines the ultimate beginning of an individual in the case, say, of man and some of the other vertebrates, it is not possible to tell the difference. Both are minute particles of matter made up of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen and to all appearances.are identical. But there 18 something else there, the life force which seems to be selective and directive, and after 10 years, on the one hand you have the boy, who has lived one sixth or one seventh of the normal span of his species, and on the other a full-grown animal.
Now this divergence from: apparently identical matter, multiplied millions and millions of times without a mistake, implies a purpose behind the process. It is evolution or the unfolding of all the potentialities of the unit and before this is possible there must have been involution or the putting into it that which is gradually unfolded.
"Selection," adaption'? and other expressions do not touch this issue, they are merely modes of evolutionary action.
At the root of the whole evolution theory is, of necessity, the idea of plan or purpose—that each variety of creature should develop along certain lines within certain limits. The method by which this is achieved is immaterial, But class uniformity suggests plan.
Thus the thoughtful may reasonably infer that whoever set the universe going was not only powerful but also purposeful.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.