CREATION BY EVOLUTION
their parts in continuing an unbroken line of life-fellowship. Here, therefore, the doctrine of descent through hereditary transmission comes into the picture.
But there is not only progressive evolution of modes of fellowship higher and higher and yet higher. There is also dissolution of fellowship. The wholes that have been built up in evolution break down in dissolution. Some day our bodies, with their organs and tissues and cells, will break down into widely distributed molecules and atoms in sundry chemical fellowships. The life-fellowship in our bodies will no longer be the fellowship of life. This is an example of dissolution. But in our children the life-fellowship of tissues and organs continues unbroken to bear onward the torch of progress in evolution.
I have sought to show that there is abundant evidence, in the world as we know it, of dissolution—may I now say dissolution of fellowship? Without it perhaps the evolution of new and higher modes of fellowship would not be such as we find it to be. But as a matter of fact, in what we may speak of as the age-long process of the building up and breaking down of modes of fellowship, evolution has prevailed over dissolution. Were this not so the higher modes of fellowship would have passed away and would no longer exist. Were this not so we should not be here to discuss this difficult problem, or, through mental and spiritual fellowship, to contribute in some measure to progress in evolution. The world as it now is affords irrefutable evidence that evolution has prevailed over dissolution.
None the less we should realise that there is in our world, at all levels of natural events, evidence of dissolution of fellowship. Falls to lower status there are; but rise to higher status has won through. Our theme is the prevalence of evolution. And here the passage is upward to something
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