and a part not nature.

Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the _ZRA_.
the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
first received its _baptism of life_ from God--in other words, derived the
animating principle of life from the source of all Life.

And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the
vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused
to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a
definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the
animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most
remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic
idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor
any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both
vegetal and animal life.

St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturA| non quseritur
miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediA|val authority.
What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just
such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth,"