The author speaks frequently of creation, and we are far from supposing that he means to deny it; but if we understand him, he does deny that the divine will creates without natural means or instrumentalities, and this appears to be what he means by "Creation by law." He asks, p. 14, "By supernatural power do we not mean power independent of the use of means, as distinguished from power depending on knowledge, even infinite knowledge of the means proper to be employed?" We think his question is not well put; certainly we never heard before of such a definition of the supernatural, unless by means is meant natural means; but as he denies all supernatural power as operating independent of the use of natural means, he must be understood as denying all creation from nothing, or that God creates all things by the word of his power, with no other means or medium than what is contained in himself. "The real difficulty," he says, "lies in the idea of will exercised without the use of means, not in the exercise of will through means which are beyond our knowledge." But what means were there through which the will could operate when nothing besides itself existed? Does the scientific author not see, unless he admits the eternal existence of something besides God, that on his ground creation must precede creation as the condition or means of creation? In the chapter on Creation by Law, pp. 280, 281, he says: "I do not know on what authority it is that we so often speak of creation as if it were not creation, unless it works from nothing as its material, and by nothing as its means. We know that out of the 'dust of the ground,' that is, out of the ordinary elements of nature are our bodies formed, and the bodies of all living things." But out of what was the "dust of the ground" or "the ordinary elements of nature" formed? He continues: "Nor is there anything which should shock us in the idea that the creation of new forms, any more than in their propagation, has been brought about by the instrumentality of means. In a theological point of view it matters nothing what those means have been." It, however, matters something in a theological point of view whether we assert that God creates without other means than is contained in his own divine being, or only by working with preexisting materials, which are independent of him, and eternal like himself.
The author professes not to know on what authority creation is denied to be creation unless from nothing as its materials, and by nothing as its means; but he must have said this without well weighing the words he uses. A man makes a watch out of materials which are supplied to his hand, and by availing himself of a motive force which exists and operates independently of him; but nobody calls him the creator of the watch. Man has, strictly speaking, no creative powers, because he can operate only on and with materials furnished him by God or nature, and cannot himself originate his own powers nor the powers he uses. He can form, fashion, utilize, to a limited extent, what already exists, but he cannot originate a new law nor a new force. The Gentile philosophers, finding in man no proper creative power, concluded that there is no proper creative power in God, and hence they substituted in their systems for creation emanation, generation, or formation; and you will search in vain through Plato or even Aristotle for the recognition of the fact of creation. Holding that God cannot, any more than man, work without materials, even the soundest of the Gentile philosophers, say Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, asserted the eternity of matter, and explained the origin of things by supposing that God impresses on this eternal matter, as the seal on wax, or in some way unites with it, the ideas or forms eternal in his own mind. Here is no creation, for though there is combination of the preexisting, there is no production of something where nothing was before; yet we cannot go beyond them, if we deny that creation proper is creation from nothing, or, as we have explained, that God creates without any material, means, or medium distinguishable from himself.
Yet no theologian pretends that God, in creating, works without means. No work, no act is possible or conceivable without principle, medium, and end. God can no more create without a medial cause than man can build a house without materials; but if the author had meditated on the significance of the dogma of the Trinity, he would have understood that God has the means or medium in himself, in his own eternal Word, by whom all things are made, and without whom was made nothing that was made. God in himself, in the unity of his own being, the mystery of the Trinity teaches us, is eternally and indissolubly, principle, medium, and end, in three distinct persons. The Father is principle, the Son or Word is medium, and the Holy Ghost is end or consummator. Hence God is complete, being in its plenitude, in himself, most pure act, as say the theologians, and, therefore, able to do what he wills without going out of himself, or using means not in himself. The medium of creation is the Word who was in the beginning, who was with God, and who is God. Hence not only by and for God, but also in him "we live and move and have our being." To suppose otherwise is, as we have seen, to suppose God does not and cannot create by himself alone, or without the aid of something exterior to and distinguishable from himself, and nothing is distinguishable from him and his own creatures, but another being in some sort eternal like himself, which philosophy, as well as theology, denies.
Rectifying the noble author's mistake as to the creative act, and bearing in mind that God creates existences by himself alone, and creates them substances or second causes, capable of producing effects in the secondary order, we are able to assert a very real and a very intelligible distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Nature is the name for all that is created, the whole order of second causes, and as God creates and sustains nature, he must be himself supernatural. God has, or at least may have, two modes of acting; the one directly, immediately, with no medium but the medium he is in himself, and this mode of acting is supernatural; the other mode is acting in and through nature, in the law according to which he has constituted nature, or the forces which he has given her, called natural laws, and this mode is natural, because in it nature acts as second cause. God himself is above this order of nature, but is always present in it by his creative act, for the universe, neither as a whole nor in any of its parts, can stand save as upheld by the Creator. A miracle is a sensible fact not explicable by the laws of nature, and, therefore, a fact that can be explained only by being referred to the direct and immediate or supernatural action of God. Whether a miracle is ever wrought is simply a question of fact, to be determined by the testimony or evidence in the case. That God can work miracles may be inferred from the fact that creation does not exhaust him, and from the fact, the noble duke has amply proved, that the natural laws do not bind him to act only through them, or in any way restrain his freedom or liberty of action. In working a miracle, God does not contravene or violate the natural laws, or the order of second causes, that is, the order of nature; he simply acts above it, and the fact is not contranatural, but supernatural. It does not destroy nature; for if it did, there would be no nature below it, and it would, therefore, not be supernatural.
The author very properly rejects the origin of species in development, at least in the higher forms of organic life, and shows that Darwin's theory of the formation of new species by natural selection does not form new species, but only selects the most vigorous of preexisting species, such as survive the struggle for life. Old species indeed become extinct and new species spring into existence; but those new species or new forms of life which science discovers are not developments, but new creations. Creation, he holds, has a history, and is successive, continually going on. We doubt whether science is in a condition to say with absolute certainty that any species that once existed are now extinct, or that new species have successively sprung into existence; but assuming the fact to be as alleged, and we certainly are unable to deny it, we cannot accept the author's explanation. We agree with him that the creative will is as present and as active as it was in the beginning, or that creation is always a present act; but for this very reason, if for no other, we should deny that it is successive, or resolvable into successive acts, since that would imply that it is past or future as well as present. Regarded on the side of God, there can be no succession in the creative act. Succession is in time; but God dwells not in time, he inhabiteth eternity. His act on his side must be complete from the instant he wills to create, and can be successive only as externized in time. Individuals and species when they have served their purpose disappear, and others come forward and take their places, not by a new creation from nothing, but because in the one creative act the appointed time and place for their external appearance have come. It is rather we who come successively to the knowledge of creation than creation that is itself successive. The creative act is one, but its externization is successive. The divine act effecting the hypostatic union of human nature with the divine person of the Word was included in the one creative act, and in relation to God and his act was complete from the first; but as a fact of time it did not take place till long after the creation of the world. It is very possible then to accept fully all the facts with regard to the appearance of new species that science discovers, without asserting successive creations; they are only the successive manifestations of the original creative act, revealing to us what we had not before seen in it.
In point of fact the author does not, though he thinks he does, assert successive creations, for he contends that the new are in some way made out of the old. He supposes the creative will prepares in what goes before for what comes after, and that the forms of life about to be extinguished approach close to and almost overlap the forms that are coming to be, and are in some way used in the creation of the new forms or species. This, as we have seen, is not creation, but formation or development, and hardly differs in substance from the doctrine of development that was held by some naturalists prior to Darwin's theory of natural selection. It supposes the material of the new creation, the causa materialis, is in the old, and the development theory only supposes that the material exists in the old in the form of a germ of the new. The difference, if any, is not worth noticing. The development again can, on any theory, go on only under the presence and constant action of the cause to which nature owes her existence, constitution, and powers.
For ourselves, we have no quarrel with the developmentists when they do not deny the conditions without which there can be no development, or understand by development what is not development but really creation. There is no development where there is no germ to be developed, and that is not development which places something different in kind from the nature of the germ. In the lower forms of organic life, of plants and animals, where the differences of species are indistinct or feebly marked, there may be, for aught we know, a natural development of new species, or what appears to be new species, that is, organic forms, not before brought out, or not perceived to be wrapped up in the forms examined; but in the higher forms of life, where the types are distinct and strongly marked, as in the mammalia, this cannot be the case, for there is no germ in one species of another. We object also to the doctrine that the higher forms of life are developed from the lower forms. Grant, what is possible, perhaps probable, but which every naturalist knows has not scientifically been made out, that there is a gradual ascent without break from the lowest forms of organic life to the highest, it would by no means follow that the higher form but develops and completes the lower. Science has not proved it, and cannot from any facts in its possession even begin to prove it. The law of gradation is very distinguishable from the law of production, and it is a grave blunder in logic to confound them; yet it seems to us that this is what the noble author does, only substituting the term natural creation for that of natural development. He seems to us to mean by the universal reign of law, which he seeks to establish, that through all nature the divine will educes the higher from the lower, or at least makes the lower the stepping-stone of the higher; yet all that science can assert is that the lower in some form subserves the higher, but not that it is its fons, or principle, or the germ from which it is developed.
On the side of God, who is its principle, medium, and end, creation is complete, consummated, both as a whole and in all its parts; but as externized, it is incomplete, imperfect, in part potential, not actual, and is completed by development in time. Looked at from our side or the point of view of the creature, we may say it was created in germ, or with unrealized possibilities. Hence development, not from one species to another, but of each species in its own order, and of each individual according to its species; hence progress, about which we hear so much, in realizing the unrealized possibilities of nature, or in reducing what is potential in the created order to act, is not only possible, but necessary to the complete externization of the creative act. This development or this progress is effected by providence acting through natural laws or natural forces, that is, second or created causes, and also, as the Christian holds, by grace, which is supernatural, and which, without destroying, superseding, or changing nature, assists it to attain an end above and beyond the reach of nature, as we have shown in the article on Nature and Grace.
We, as well as the author, assert the universal reign of law, but we do not accept his definition of law, as "will enforcing itself with power," whether we speak of human law or the divine law, for that is precisely the definition we give to will or power acting without law, or from mere arbitrariness. The Duke of Argyle is a citizen of a constitutional state, and professes to be a liberal statesman; he should not then adopt a definition of law which makes might the measure of right, or denies to right any principle, type, or foundation in the divine nature. We have already suggested the true definition of law—will directed by reason; and God's will is always law, because in him his eternal will and his eternal reason are inseparable, and in him really indistinguishable. His will is, indeed, always law, because it is the will of God, our creator; but if it were possible to conceive him willing without his eternal reason, his will would not and could not bind, though it might compel. The law is not in will alone, or in reason alone, but really in the synthetic action of both. Hence St. Augustine tells us that unjust laws are violences rather than laws, and all jurists, as distinguished from mere legists, tell us that all legislative acts that directly contravene the law of God, or the law of natural justice, do not bind, and are null and void from the beginning.