Volume 2 	            Lawrence, Kansas            	February 1962	  	       Number 2

(Note: In our previous article we noted that in nature God reveals himself in the instincts of animals - that such instincts could not be implanted in their hearts by blind, unintelligent chance. We herewith continue the same line of argument.)

One of the water spiders fashions a balloon-shaped nest of cobwebs filaments and attaches it to some object under water. Then she ingeniously entangles an air bubble in the hairs of her body, carries it to the water, and releases it under the nest. This performance is repeated until the nest is inflated, when she proceeds to bring forth and raise her young safe from attack from the air. Here we have the synthesis of the web, engineering, construction, and aeronautics. Chance, you say? But that leaves the spider unexplained!

The young salmon spends years at sea, then comes back to his own river, and, what is more, he travels up the side of the river into which flows the tributary in which he was born. The laws of the state on one side of the river may be strict and the other side not, but these laws may be said to affect only the fish which may be said to belong to each side. What brings them back so definitely? If a salmon going up a river is transferred to another tributary, he will at once realize he is not in the right stream, and will fight his way down the main stream and then turn up the current to finish his destiny. There is however a more difficult problem in the exact reverse to solve in the case of the eel. Those amazing creatures migrate at maturity from all the ponds and rivers everywhere-those from Europe across thousands of miles of ocean, all go to the abysmal depths south of Bermuda. There they breed and die. The little ones with no apparent means of knowing anything except that they are in a wilderness of water, start back and find their way to the shore from which their parents came, and thence to every river, lake and little pond, so that each body of water is always populated with eels. They braved the mighty currents, storms and tides, and have conquered the beating waves on every shore. They can grow, and when they are mature, they will by some mysterious law, go back through it all to complete the cycle. Where does the directing impulse originate? No American eel has ever been caught in European waters, and no European eel has been caught in American waters. Nature has delayed the maturity of the European eel by one year to make up for its greater journey.

Birds taken from their nest when very young, and raised in captivity, will, when mature build nests in the exact pattern of, their species. Hereditary habits have their origin deep in the mists of antiquity. Are these distinctive acts the result of chance or of intelligent provision? We could go on and delve into mysteries of nature, but these examples show us the wisdom and power of God in the world about us. Conceited men feel no need of God, but deep in the heart of every normal person is the consciousness of a superior power that can be called by one name only—God. It is not difficult to agree with David in his well-known statement, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God"—Psalm 14:1. We repeat, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge." [Psalms 19:1-2]