vet"* 
 
 x^ 
 
 ^i X¥ ^¥olagiciti ^ 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 \ 
 
 '* 
 
 % 
 
 BL 263 .C47 1887 
 Christianity and evolution 
 
misbet'a gbeotoQlcal Xibrang. 
 

 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 AND 
 
 EVOLUTION 
 
 MODERN PROBLEMS OF THE FAITH, 
 
 BY TllE REVS. 
 
 GEORGE MATHESON, D.D, 
 
 T. W. FOWLE, M.A., 
 
 SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A., 
 
 PROFESSOR MOMERIE, D.Sc, LL.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR CHAPMAN, M.A., 
 
 P. W. DARNTON, B.A., 
 
 J. MATTHEWS, 
 
 W. F. ADENEY, M.A., 
 
 A. F. MUIR, M.A., AND 
 
 J. J. MURPHY, Esq. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVII. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THESE Papers, which appeared in the Homiletic 
 Magazine during 1886-87, it has been 
 thought advisable to republish. Not professing 
 to cover the entire field of debate between Faith 
 and Science, they will, we trust, nevertheless be 
 found sufficiently representative of the spirit and 
 temper in which Christian thinkers seek to deal 
 with the problems to which the progress of 
 modern thought and life is ever giving rise. 
 They are in the nature of an Eirenikon ; and in 
 order to this it was not essential that the writers 
 should occupy an absolutely identical standpoint 
 with respect to the great question of Evolution : 
 all that was required of them was a conviction 
 that acceptance of the ascertained facts of Evolu- 
 tion is not incompatible with a genuine, intelligent 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 Christian Faitli. Although, therefore, a general 
 agreement will be found to exist throughout the 
 series, one or two of the writers have made no 
 secret of their holding a much more limited view 
 of the scope and character of Evolution than that 
 represented by the rest. Should exception be 
 taken to this circumstance, we would respectfully 
 submit, that in the settlement of great vital 
 questions it must tend in a much higher degree 
 to healthy, thorough, and impartial discussion 
 Avhen debaters are left perfectly free in every- 
 thing save the essentials of the point at issue. 
 In the hope that the following pages may be 
 found helpful by many whose spirits are shadowed 
 by the scepticism of the age, we now commit them 
 to the judgment of earnest and thoughtful men. 
 
 Feedk. Hastings, 
 A. F. MuiR, 
 
 Editors of the ^' Homiletic Magazine." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EVOLUTION m RELATION TO MIRACLE . . i 
 By the Rev. GEORGE^ATHESON, D.D. 
 
 IT. 
 
 BIOGENESIS . v^ 27 
 
 By the Rev. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 
 
 III. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN q 
 
 By the Rev. A. W. MOMERIE, D.Sc, LL.D. 
 
 IV. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 OF THE INC-A^NATION . . . .74 
 By the Rev. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 
 
 V. 
 
 INSPIRATION AND^VOLUTION. ... 93 
 By the Rev. T. AY. FOWLE, MA. 
 
Viii CONTENTS. 
 
 VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY . . . m 
 By the Rev. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 
 
 VII. 
 EVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL . 129 
 By the Rev. JOHN MATTHEWS. 
 
 VIIL 
 EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE 
 
 OF SIN AND REDEMPTION . . .142 
 • By the Rev. Professor CHARLES "cHAPMAN, M.A. 
 
 IX. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLICAL REPRESEN- 
 TATIONS OF GOD . . ^ . . .167 
 By the Rev. Professor CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 
 
 X. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND MAN'S FACULTY OF KNOW- 
 LEDGE . .196 
 
 By JOSEPH JOHn'mURPHY, Esq. 
 
 XL 
 EVOLUTION: HEAVEN AND HELL . . .216 
 By the Rev. Sir GEORGE W.'cOX, Bart., M.A. 
 
 XII. 
 HAS EVOLUTION A CLAIM TO A PLACE IN 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM? . . .250 
 By the Rev. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE, 
 By the Kev. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 
 
 TN the spring of 1885 I published a work with 
 this title, '*Can the Old Faith live with the 
 New ? " It was confessedly the attempt at a har- 
 mony between the science of the nineteenth century 
 and the theology of the past. As such it was 
 opposed to the lire of two opposing camps, between 
 which it sought to rest — the camp of the scientific 
 materialist, who denied the right to look beyond 
 Nature, and the camp of the conservative dogmatist, 
 who denied the right to desert the forms of old 
 tradition. It was sometimes represented as a book 
 of the old school of theology, sometimes as an eflfort 
 to advocate the claims of relio^ious liberalism. It 
 must be confessed that the severest criticisms it 
 
 A 
 
2 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 received were from the side of religious conserva- 
 tism. It was nowhere maintained to be at variance 
 w^ith scientific fact, but it was more than once 
 assailed as inimical to the popular religious view. 
 The point in which it was thought to be most at 
 variance with that view was on the subject of the 
 miraculous. Within a month after its appearance 
 it was assailed by two critics on the ground of its 
 opposition to the commonly-received doctrine of 
 the supernatural. One of these critics asserted 
 that I had practically excluded the possibility of a 
 miracle by admitting that evolution implied the 
 sequence of a chain. The other took exception to 
 my attempt to distinguish between the violation of 
 a law and the transcendence of a law, and declared 
 the distinction to be without a difference. My own 
 opinion is that this part of my work was not ex- 
 pressed with sufficient clearness nor dwelt upon at 
 adequate length. I was so bent on the design of 
 establishing a harmony between the possible results 
 of modern speculation and the traditional doctrines 
 of Christian revelation, that I did not sufficiently 
 take into account another element of the question. 
 I did not sufficiently consider that the main diffi- 
 culty does not lie in the doctrines, but in the 
 alleged mode in which these doctrines have been 
 communicated, and that until this fundamental 
 
THE EEV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 6 
 
 question be settled, tliere can be no solution of 
 the problem whether revelation can subsist with 
 science. 
 
 Accordingly, I have not unwillingly accepted an 
 invitation from the editors of this series of essays to 
 supplement and elucidate the point which my book 
 has left comparatively untouched. I have accepted 
 it not in any spirit of controversy, and still less 
 with the desim of defendins^ the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion, but simply and solely in pursuance of the 
 plan which led to the writing of the work, " Can 
 the Old Faith live with the New ? " 
 
 Our subject is the relation of evolution to miracle. 
 It clearly divides itself into two parts. On one 
 side it touches the domain of religion, on the other 
 the sphere of science. There are two ideas which 
 have to be separately considered — the idea of 
 miracle and the idea of evolution. The most diffi- 
 cult task in the solution of any problem is the 
 task of definition ; and the controversies arising 
 from disputed problems would be greatly minimised 
 if men could agree beforehand as to the sense in 
 which each combatant used the words in dispute. 
 Accordingly, I propose to make the chief part of 
 this paper a matter of definition, an explanation 
 of the meanino; we attach to the terms of the 
 question. We shall first consider the signification 
 
4 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 of the word "miracle," in the Christian sense of 
 the term, and we shall afterwards investigate the 
 meaning of the word " evolutioD," in the scientific 
 sense of the term. 
 
 What, then, is the Christian s sense of the word 
 '' miracle " '? In former times it was popularly used 
 to denote the violation of a law of the universe by 
 the mandate of an absolute will. There are still a 
 few who pertinaciously adhere to this definition, 
 and their zeal increases in intensity in proportion 
 as the extent of their numbers diminishes. It seems 
 at first sight as if their position were one of special 
 reverence. They ask us if we do not believe in the 
 existence of a Supreme Will, exalted over visible 
 Nature. They ask us if, holding such a belief, we 
 shaU refuse to assign to that will the right and pre- 
 rogative of breaking through the course of Nature. 
 If we should refuse to see the highest Divine pre- 
 rogative in such a violation of law, they demand by 
 what authority we dethrone God from His absolute 
 empire, by what right we limit within the domain 
 of law that will which we have already conceded 
 to be paramount over the visible universe. 
 
 Now, plausible as this language undoubtedly is, 
 it is founded upon a mistake. It is built upon an 
 error as to the true source of Christian reverence. 
 As believers in Christianity, we all hold that the 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 5 
 
 will of God reigns paramount over the visible uni- 
 verse ; in other words, that in relation to the visible 
 universe the will of God is an ultimate fact beyond 
 which there can be no appeal. But while we hold 
 that the will of God is an ultimate fact in relation 
 to the visible universe, we do not hold that it is 
 ultimate in relation to God Himself. We believe 
 that the Divine will has something behind it — a 
 Divine Nature, or, which is the same thing, a law 
 of Divine being. Our reason for believing this, as 
 Christians, is the simple fact that we are taught by 
 Christianity to think of man as made in the image 
 of God, and that we have learned from human ex- 
 perience that this is the nature of man. Our will 
 is only the expression of our nature ; it is not the 
 first but the last stage in the process of human 
 character. Every act which I perform, every reso- 
 lution which I make, every choice which I elect to 
 follow, is the latest result of a law of my being, 
 and is determined by that law. Looking upon 
 ourselves as made in the image of God, we are 
 constrained to regard the Divine will as standing 
 in a precisely similar relation. Every Christian 
 will repudiate the notion that in worshipping his 
 God he is worshipping an arbitrary will. Is it right 
 that a man should pray, " Thy will be done in earth 
 as it is in heaven " ? We must answer. It depends 
 
6 EVOLUTION m RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 on the meaning he attaches to the word "Thy." 
 What is his conception of that God whose will he 
 desires to be done ? Does he regard Him as a 
 Moloch, as a crushing power, as a being whose sole 
 desire is the aggrandizement of himself? Then 
 there is no virtue in the prayer, " Thy will be 
 done ; " it is really a prayer for the establishment 
 of selfishness. But does he look upon the being to 
 whom he prays as already in possession of a law of 
 life which impels Him to do good ? Does he regard 
 His will as a '' good, acceptable, and perfect will " — 
 in other words, as something which is determined 
 by a nature of absolute purity ? Then his prayer 
 for the performance of that will is itself an expres- 
 sion of the highest Christian love, and an evidence 
 of participation in the spiritual purity which he 
 seeks to evoke. 
 
 But now what does all this mean ? Nothing less 
 than this, that not will but law is the ultimate fact 
 of the universe. If the will of God be only an 
 expression of the nature of God, and if the nature 
 of God be but another phrase for the law of His 
 being, it follows inevitably that the universe ulti- 
 mately rests, not upon the mandates of an arbitrary 
 will, but upon the basis of a steadfast, fixed, in- 
 variable law — so steadfast and invariable as to 
 justify the application of the words : " Heaven and 
 
THE EEV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 7 
 
 earth may pass away, but my word shall not pass 
 away." 
 
 Are we prepared to take the next step in the 
 reasoning out of this problem ? It is very clear 
 and very unavoidable. We have seen that the will 
 of God is not the ultimate fact of the universe, that 
 behind this will there dwells a law of Divine being 
 which gives it its existence and determines its 
 movements. We have seen that this law of Divine 
 being, just because it is Divine, must be permanent ; 
 it is itself the ultimate fact, and, therefore, it must 
 be the eternal and unchanging fact. The inference 
 from this is immediate and irresistible; there can 
 be no such thing as an absolute miracle. To believe 
 in the existence of an absolute miracle would be to 
 believe in the existence of something existing behind 
 the nature of God, which could violate the law of 
 God; it would be, therefore, tantamount not to 
 the expression of reverence, but to the assertion of 
 atheism. Whatever definition, therefore, we assign 
 to the word ^'miracle," it can only be a relative 
 definition. Our Christian belief demands that we 
 should deny the possibility of a violation of ultimate 
 law, in other words, of the law of God's being ; this 
 is only, in difi'erent terms, to say that in the sight 
 of God, and from the standpoint of the Divine 
 nature, nothing can be miraculous. That which is 
 
8 EVOLUTION m RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 abnormal to the man may be strictly normal to the 
 angel, and that which is supernatural to the angel 
 must be very natural indeed to the Father of spirits. 
 A miracle can only exist in relation to certain spheres 
 of being ; there can be no absolute violation of uni- 
 versal law. 
 
 Is there then any other definition which we can 
 give of a miracle, any definition which will preserve 
 the idea of the supernatural without destroying our 
 reverence for the majesty of Divine law ? It seems 
 to me that there is, and I shall now proceed briefly 
 to define and defend it. I should define a miracle 
 in the Christian sense to be the initial stage of 
 that process by which a lower law is transcended 
 by a higher law. Let us consider this definition 
 in detail. It comprehends two questions : What 
 is meant by the transcendence of a lower by a 
 higher law ? and, AVhat is meant by the initial 
 stage of that process ? 
 
 The first question will, I think, be best answered 
 by an illustration. When I lift my foot in order to 
 walk, I have come into a certain relation to the law 
 of gravity. What is that relation ? The natural 
 position of my foot ought clearly to be the ground, 
 that is to say, if the idea of mind be excluded, there 
 is no reason in the world why it should not rest on 
 the ground and rest there for ever; the law of 
 
THE EEV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 9 
 
 gravitation imperatively demands it. But let the 
 element of mind be introduced and there enters 
 a change of conditions which entirely alters the 
 original state of things. In lifting my foot from 
 the ground I have modified the original law of 
 gravitation, so far as the foot is concerned. I 
 have not violated the law, I have not even sus- 
 pended it ; it still continues to exist and to ope- 
 rate in its own sphere. But I have myself come 
 into contact with another and a higher sphere, a 
 sphere in which the old material conditions do not 
 apply, and in which the law of these conditions is 
 no longer in force. The principle of mind or of 
 vitality has been stronger than the original form of 
 the law of gravitation, and has enabled me to tran- 
 scend that form. Transcendence is, in fact, the 
 only word which can legitimately be applied to the 
 process. There has been no interference, strictly 
 speaking, with the original law of Nature — that 
 law is still left in possession of its material sphere. 
 What has happened is that an element once in- 
 cluded in that sphere has been lifted into a new 
 and upper region, whereby it has been rendered 
 comparatively independent of the influences which 
 formerly dominated it. 
 
 But here I anticipate an objection. It may be 
 said, Your very illustration refutes your own 
 
10 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 tlieory. It proves too much. If accepted as tlie 
 legitimate instance of a miracle, it would annihi- 
 late the distinction between miracles and everyday 
 events. You say that in lifting your foot from the 
 ground you are transcending the materialistic form 
 of the law of gravitation; granted, are you then 
 performing a miracle ? Do you suppose that in 
 this simple act you are doing anything super- 
 natural ; if not, where is your definition ? Has 
 not your own illustration proved that the mere 
 transcendence of a lower law by a higher law does 
 not contain in itself that sense of supernatural 
 power which is necessary to the very idea of 
 miracle ? 
 
 Now to this I answer, What my critic says is 
 true, and I never supposed it to be otherwise than 
 true. It is because I have foreseen the inevitable- 
 ness and the justice of such a criticism that I have 
 not defined a miracle to be the transcendence of a 
 lower by a higher law ; I have purposely inserted a 
 qualifying clause. A miracle is not the transcend- 
 ence of a lower by a higher law, but it is the initial 
 stage in that process of transcendence. The lifting 
 of my foot from the ground is not a miracle to me, 
 but why ? because I am already in natural posses- 
 sion of the power by which this is done. But let 
 us take an imaginary case. Let us suppose that 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 11 
 
 no liviog creature had hitherto ever possessed the 
 power to lift either the hand or foot ; in other 
 words, that the hands and feet of all living 
 creatures had hitherto been forced to obey the 
 same principle of gravity, which in the absence of 
 disturbing causes keeps a material object rivetted 
 to its place. Let us further suppose that to one 
 individual of the human species there had for the 
 first time come that power which had hitherto been 
 denied to all forms human or animal, that for the 
 first time a being possessed of the hand and the 
 foot had manifested the ability to lift these organs 
 from their position of natural gravity ; what name 
 would the associates of this favoured being give 
 to such a manifestation ? Could they call it any- 
 thing else than a miracle ? If they saw their com- 
 rade for the first time in history begin to walk on 
 the ground, in what respect would their impression 
 of the miraculous difi'er from that impression which 
 men now have when they hear of Christ walking 
 on the seal We now look upon walking on the 
 ground as a perfectly natural occurrence, but that 
 is simply because the initial stage of the process 
 is past. The law which was once transcendent 
 has become normal and natural. Is there any- 
 thin or absurd in the notion that if our mental 
 development were complete, we should find the 
 
12 EVOLUTION m RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 process of walking on tlie sea to be as reconcil- 
 able with science as the process of walking on 
 the ground. The hope of every Christian is that 
 he shall one day see face to face and know even 
 as he is known; what is this but to believe that 
 there is a time comino; in which the things now 
 called supernatural shall be found to have been 
 strictly according to Nature, and when the seem- 
 ing violations of physical law shall be recognised 
 to have been only the fulfilment of the law of the 
 spirit of life ? 
 
 AYe have now looked at the subject on its reli- 
 gious side. We have defined and defended the 
 Christian sense of the word '' miracle." "We come 
 next to the scientific side of the subject ; we have 
 to define the meaning of the word " evolution." 
 In this latter case we stand in a difi'erent position 
 from that occupied in the previous instance. The 
 Bible has nowhere defined the meaning of the w^ord 
 "miracle," and, therefore, we require to make a 
 definition ; but science has defined the meaning of 
 the word " evolution," and, therefore, we are here 
 under no such necessity. In reasoning with the 
 evolutionist w^e have no right to take any defini- 
 tion except that which he himself has given ; we 
 must meet him on his own ground. Accordingly 
 I shall accept here the definition of the word 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 13 
 
 "evolution" as given by its leading apostle, Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer. He says, "Evolution is an in- 
 teo-ration of matter and concomitant dissipation of 
 motion, during which the matter passes from an 
 indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite 
 coherent heterogeneity, and during which the re- 
 tained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." 
 Let me at the outset direct attention to a pecu- 
 liarity in this definition, which so far as known to 
 me has not hitherto been noticed. I allude to the 
 fact that Mr. Spencer, in defining the process of 
 evolution, has never once used any expression which 
 would indicate his ascription to that process of a 
 material agency. He does not say that evolution 
 is produced by any physical cause ; he limits him- 
 self entirely to the description of a material eflect. 
 He says that matter is integrated, but he nowhere 
 affirms how it is integrated. He says that while 
 matter is being integrated, motion is being dissi- 
 pated ; but he does not affirm that there is any 
 causal connection between the two ; he studiously 
 confines himself to the assertion of the fact of their 
 co-existence, and therefore he designedly employs 
 the word " concomitant." He declares that while 
 matter is being integrated and motion dissipated 
 there is going on the transition from the homo- 
 iieneous iutu the heterogeneous, but here again he 
 
14 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIHACLE. 
 
 declines to commit himself to tlie position that the 
 one process is tlie cause of the other, and contents 
 himself with declaring that the one process takes 
 place during the other. This caution on the part 
 of Mr. Spencer is no mere timidity ; it is the result 
 of a scientific conviction which has found expression 
 again and again throughout his writings. If he 
 refuses to declare that evolution is a material pro- 
 cess, it is because he does not believe it to be a 
 material process. The world as we see it and know 
 it is with him a manifestation, not a manifestor ; 
 an effect, not a cause. He declines to say that the 
 process is one which is effected by the inherent 
 power of matter, because he does not believe that 
 matter has an absolutely inherent power. Behind 
 the manifestations of matter he recognises the pre- 
 sence of a law whose nature he confesses to be un- 
 known, a law pervading and permeating all things, 
 yet itself inscrutable ; determining the motions of 
 all change, yet itself unchangeable ; present in the 
 dissolution of all forms, yet itself persistent. This 
 inscrutable law, this abiding force, this changeless 
 presence, is Mr. Spencer's synonym for God ; he 
 calls it the Unknowable. Yet, however unknowable 
 it be, it demands precisely the same amount of faith 
 as is required for the belief of the theist, and in- 
 volves the same supernatural necessities which the 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON", M.A., D.D. 15 
 
 belief of the tlieist implies. Here is an absolute 
 law, or transcendental power, which, scientifically 
 speaking, is precisely analogous to that absolute 
 law or power which the Christian recognises at the 
 basis of all things. If we accept this doctrine of 
 the modern apostle of evolution we shall be led 
 to an irresistible conclusion. Whatever difficulties 
 may attach to the reconciliation of evolution with 
 miracle, they do not lie at the head of the chain. 
 At the head of the chain, Mr. Spencer being judge, 
 there is something which is not evolved because 
 it is perfectly persistent. If it be unknowable, on 
 that very account it cannot be known to be im- 
 personal. Science, by admitting that at the head 
 of the evolutionary chain there exists an unknow- 
 able region, has thereby left a margin open to the 
 flight of faith. Christian faith may, without the 
 charge of being unscientific, take possession of this 
 vacant field, and continue to hold possession of it 
 until science, or some other power, may be able to 
 claim it as its own. 
 
 But let us advance a step further. AVe have 
 arrived at the conclusion, by the concessions of 
 science herself, that whatever difficulty lies in the 
 co-existence of evolution with miracle, does not lie 
 at the head of the chain. We have now to ask if it 
 lies in the middle of the chain. The question is : 
 
16 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 Is it scientifically possible tliat this absolute law 
 which the Christian assumes to be a mental law 
 should from time to time so manifest itself in the 
 affairs of Nature as to transcend the lower or 
 physical law ? And here let me put a subsidiary 
 question, the answer to which lies within the range 
 of human experience. It is this : Would the chain 
 of physical evolution have been the same if there 
 had never existed in the world the phenomena of 
 life and of mind ? If the material chain of Nature 
 had never been supplemented by those links which 
 we call mental, would it have exhibited to a spec- 
 tator to-day the same aspect which it exhibits to 
 us ? The answer from all sides will be. No. There 
 is not even a materialist who would for a moment 
 deny that the introduction of life and mind into 
 the chain of material Nature has completely altered 
 that course which material Nature would have 
 taken without the introduction of these things. 
 It is true, the materialist contends that what we 
 call life and mind were originally themselves pro- 
 duced by the chain of material Nature, but that is 
 not the question. We are not here inquiring how 
 they were produced ; we are seeking in the mean- 
 time common ground between all opponents. We 
 take our stand on the admitted fact that mind is 
 mind now, however it came to be mind. Standing 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 1? 
 
 on the basis of that fact there is one question, and 
 one alone, which is pertinent to the present inquiry 
 — the question whether the presence of mind in 
 the world has altered that condition of things which 
 would have been produced in its absence by the 
 mere mechanical laws of Nature. We repeat that 
 on this subject there will be no divergence of 
 opinion. Mr. G. H. Lewes, whom nobody will 
 suspect of a partiality for spiritualism, has not 
 scrupled to declare that the entrance of man into 
 the world has ideally reconstructed the universe. 
 Our own experience will convince us that there has 
 been a material as well as an ideal reconstruction. 
 The movements of Nature are not the same as they 
 would have been if the simplest manifestations of 
 life had been absent from the scene. Every word 
 we speak creates a motion in the atmosphere, 
 which on the principles of science can have no end. 
 Every step we plant upon the ground displaces 
 an atom of the earth on which we move. Every 
 pebble we cast into the sea awakens circles of 
 motion whose influence is, scientifically speaking, 
 interminable. These are commonplaces; but all 
 the more do they illustrate the great principle we 
 Lave in view : they prove that, explain it as we 
 will, the great evolutionary chain of material 
 Nature occupies to-day a totally different position 
 
18 EVOLUTION m EELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 from that wbicli it occupied before the birth of 
 life, and that it is through the birth of life, and 
 through the development of mind, that the links 
 of the material chain have been modified and 
 changed. 
 
 If now we assume that the principle of mind, 
 which confessedly exists in the middle of the chain, 
 existed originally at its head, we shall have solved 
 already the main difficulty between the claims of 
 evolution and miracle. We have seen that science 
 has left to faith the right to make such an assump- 
 tion. She has admitted that at the head of the 
 chain there exists a world which to her is inscrut- 
 able, unknowable ; and in that admission she has 
 left open to the flight of faith a region as yet 
 unappropriated by knowledge. Christian faith has 
 appropriated that region, and has postulated at the 
 head of the chain the assumption of an omnipotent 
 and omniscient will. Once grant this assumption 
 to be not unscientific, which science herself has 
 confessed, and all the difficulties between evolution 
 and miracle ought to vanish away. If there be 
 mind at the head of the chain, there can be no 
 reason in the world why it should not be able to 
 do what is effected by mind in the middle of the 
 chain. If mind in the middle of the chain — mind 
 as we know it and feel it — has actually succeeded 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 19 
 
 in altering: the natural course which would have 
 been followed in its absence by the mechanical 
 universe, by what reasoning can it be affirmed 
 that at least an equal power is not possessed by 
 that omnipotent and omniscient will which faith 
 places at the head of all things? Once concede 
 the existence of such a will, and you must con- 
 cede to it all the rights of mind, all the powers 
 which confessedly lie within your own mental 
 being*. The mechanical course of Nature has been 
 dominated by your own spirit ; shall it not much 
 rather be subject to the Father of spirits 1 
 
 But I may be reminded that I have ignored the 
 presence of a great law of Nature, whose discovery 
 is one of the main triumphs of modern science — 
 the law of the correlation of forces. I may be 
 reminded that it is precisely in this place that the 
 chain of evolution presses most heavily upon the 
 doctrine of miracles. Mr. Stopford Brooke, in an 
 eloquent sermon on the nature of prayer, has made 
 great use of this law to disprove the possibility 
 of any answer from without. The illustration on 
 which he lays hold is that of a storm at sea. He 
 tells us that the forces expended in that storm are 
 bound to expend themselves, that what is given 
 out to-day is simply the equivalent of what was 
 gathered up yesterday. He warns us accordingly 
 
20 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 that it is of no use to pray for the mitigation of 
 the storm so far as we have that end in view ; the 
 only good of such a prayer must be that it may 
 serve to calm the mind, and prepare it to sustain 
 with equanimity whatever may befall. To arrest 
 the progress of the storm would be to arrest the 
 correlation of forces, to refuse the right of outflow 
 to those elements of Nature which yesterday were 
 gathered in. 
 
 Now I agree with Mr. Brooke that a storm at 
 sea or anywhere else is a perfect illustration of that 
 scientific principle called the correlation of forces. 
 I agree also with Mr. Brooke that to interrupt the 
 outflow of what was once an inflow would be to 
 violate a law of Nature ; and, as a matter of fact, 
 I do not believe in the violation of natural law. 
 But the question is. Is there conceivable any other 
 method in which the desired result could be 
 efiected'? Is it conceivable that a mental force 
 should be able, without interrupting the correlation 
 of natural forces, to set in motion certain currents 
 which might modify the destructive efiects of these 
 forces ? Do we see anything analogous to this in 
 the powers of the human mind in their action 
 upon external Nature ? I think we do. Have we 
 ever considered the precise philosophic import of 
 that remarkable experiment called throwing oil on 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 21 
 
 the waters. That experiment has been devised by 
 the human mind in answer to the cries and prayers 
 of shipwrecked mariners. Its design is to calm 
 within a certain radius the waters troubled by the 
 storm, and so to afford time for possible relief. 
 Now what is it that is actually done by any suc- 
 cessful experiment of throwing oil on the waters ? 
 There is, as we have said, an actual pacification 
 effected within a limited radius. But how is the 
 pacification effected ? Has the correlation of forces 
 been interrupted ? Has the law of physical evolu- 
 tion been violated ? Not at all. The elements of 
 the storm, which were gathered in yesterday, have 
 been allowed freely to expend themselves to-day, 
 and the amount of the force given out has been 
 precisely equivalent to the amount of the force 
 taken in. What has happened is not a violation 
 but a transcendence of law. There has been super- 
 induced over the original forces the action of another 
 and a more powerful force. That force is not the 
 oil but the mind. The oil might have existed 
 for ages without producing any such result, if the 
 faculties of the human soul had not possessed the 
 power to recognise its adaptation to such a use. 
 Here, then, in the experience of man, we have, on 
 however small a scale, the instance of a mental 
 force able to enter into the sphere of physical 
 
22 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 forces, and able within that spliere, without vio- 
 lating their action, to modify their influence. How 
 shall it seem a thingr incredible that what a human 
 mind can do, a Divine mind should also be able to 
 achieve ? Postulate by that act of faith, which we 
 have seen to be not unscientific, the existence of 
 an omnipotent and omniscient intelligence at the 
 head of the evolutionary chain, and on what prin- 
 ciple are we entitled to deny to that intelligence 
 the powder which we recognise as existing in our 
 own souls ? On what principle are we entitled to 
 say that the power whom we profess to worship as 
 the Creator of heaven and earth has less influence 
 over the forces of heaven and earth than those 
 limited human faculties which materialism declares 
 to be the product of these forces ? Are w^e not led 
 by such a conclusion into the wildest unscientific 
 fallacy, into the assertion of a violation of natural 
 law compared to which the miracles of Christianity 
 grow pale ? 
 
 We have now looked at the subject on its two 
 sides ; we have viewed it both in its religious and 
 in its scientific aspect. It remains that we should 
 ask if there be any common standpoint from which 
 the two sides may be seen together. Does Scrip- 
 ture ofi'er any conception of the universe w^hich 
 will lend itself to the conception entertained by 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 23 
 
 modern science ? It seems to me that such a 
 community of standpoint will be found in the 
 remarkable passage, Ephesians ii. 21, "In whom, 
 each several building, fitly framed together, groweth 
 into a holy temple in the Lord." We have called 
 it a remarkable passage because, however uncon- 
 sciously, it is singularly in unison with modern 
 views. It recognises at the outset that the uni- 
 verse is a growth, that it does not reach its per- 
 fection at a leap or bound, but through a gradual 
 process of development ascends to its goal. It 
 recognises that this growth is a procession from 
 one unity to another. The structure at first exists 
 only ideally in the thought of the Divine Spirit ; 
 this is expressed in the words, " In whom." Then 
 comes the actual separation of elements, and each 
 several building is seen fitly framed together in 
 distinct and seemingly independent existence. At 
 last the separation is overruled by a new unity, 
 aud each several building is so united with the 
 other as to become the many mansions of one holy 
 temple. Such is the Apostle's conception of the 
 development of this universe. It is not really a 
 procession from the homogeneous to the heteroge- 
 neous, and from the heterogeneous back to the 
 homosfeneous aii;ain. We kuow what had to inter- 
 vene before this building could be consummated — 
 
24 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 a series of successive stages, each rising above its 
 predecessor, and each marking a transcendence of 
 the original law. Step by step we see the plan of 
 the building unfolded, and we are made increas- 
 ingly conscious that its plan is the development of 
 spirit. First in the scale comes that which we call 
 dead matter, though it is a term w^hich expresses 
 rather what we do not know than what we do 
 know. Then comes the manifestation of matter, 
 no longer as dead, but as alive, and we are intro- 
 duced into the presence of that inscrutable thing 
 called force. Next we are called to observe a 
 phenomenon, which, for want of a better name,, 
 we may call the prophecy of life; we allude to 
 that process of crystallisation by which material 
 forces select regular forms. By and by we have 
 life itself, though as yet only spontaneous life, life 
 unconscious of its being, the life of the vegetable 
 world. A little higher in the scale and w-e reach 
 life conscious, the life that feels and struggles, the 
 vitality of the animal frame. Another step up- 
 ward and we have a development higher still ; we 
 have come to the life of humanity, to an existence 
 which is not only conscious, but conscious of its 
 own consciousness. A final stage remains, and it 
 is that towards which from the beginning the 
 whole fabric was moving; humanity culminates 
 
THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. 25 
 
 in the Son of Man. It is no longer merely life 
 spontaneous, life sentient, life conscious of its own 
 sentiency; it is life capable of imparting itself. 
 The first Adam is at best but a living soul, the 
 second is a quickening or life-giving Spirit. Such 
 is the plan of the building as it is unfolded by 
 revelation, as it is seen in history, as it is chron- 
 icled by science. It is a plan which at every 
 stage demands the transcendence of the lower by 
 the higher law. Every step of that plan is a 
 step of miracle in relation to the grade below 
 it. Force is a miracle from the standpoint of 
 dead matter, because it transcends that vis inertice 
 which is the law of dead matter's being. Crys- 
 tallisation is a miracle from the standpoint of force, 
 because it indicates that force is softening down 
 into something which resembles an apprehension 
 of beauty. Vegetation is a miracle in the light 
 of the mere crystallised form, for it is the intro- 
 duction on the scene of something which can 
 propagate itself. The animal is a miracle in the 
 light of the vegetable world, because it reveals the 
 arrest of life's spontaneity, and the sensation of its 
 pain. The human is a miracle in the light of the 
 animal, because it reveals a law that transcends 
 the sensation of life, and is able to criticise that 
 sensation. Lastly, the Son of Man is a miracle in 
 
26 EVOLUTION IN RELATION TO MIRACLE. 
 
 the liglit of the human, though not in the light of 
 the Highest. He is the very nature of God, but 
 He is as yet abnormal to the merely human. In 
 Him the law of life reaches its utmost power of 
 transcendence — the power not only to be, but to 
 impart its being ; not only to live, but to com- 
 municate its existence ; the climax of miracles is 
 reached when the law of the Spirit of life has 
 made us free. 
 
II. 
 
 BIOGENESIS, 
 By the Eev. p. W. DARNTON, B.A. 
 
 T HE almost unprecedented popularity of Professor 
 Drummond's " Natural Law in the Spiritual 
 World " is full of significance for those who study 
 the rapid changes and developments of modern 
 theoloo^ical thouo^ht. That ten editions of such a 
 book should be demanded in the course of about 
 two years indicates, we think, a great desire in 
 the minds of a large circle of readers for fresh 
 evidences of the supernatural. A deep conviction 
 has been produced by the researches and specula- 
 tions of such men as Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and 
 the followers of Darwin, that the old methods of 
 proof are somehow imperfect, and are less reliable 
 than was supposed ; and such a book as this, which 
 professes to find a new basis for theology, and to 
 bring spiritual facts into line with scientific con- 
 clusions, must have, therefore, a great fascination 
 for multitudes of people. 
 
28 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 Possibly one reason of the profound interest 
 taken by thoughtful men in the book, has been 
 the freshness and originality of the views pro- 
 pounded. The first effect upon the minds of 
 many readers — we are speaking from much ob- 
 servation — has been one of wonder and perplexity. 
 They have been arrested by the boldness with which 
 the scientific method has been applied to religious 
 philosophy, by the way in which conclusions of scien- 
 tific and even sceptical writers have been pressed 
 into the service of the very theology against which 
 they were aimed. Some have been repelled by the 
 somewhat hard and relentless manner in w^hich con- 
 clusions have been pressed to their logical conse- 
 quences, and have been alarmed at the prospect of 
 being driven by the pitiless arguments of modern 
 science into a Calvinism which the Christian Church 
 seemed to have left behind. The suspicion, too, 
 has crept in that if the facts of the spiritual can be 
 accounted for by well-known laws of the material 
 world, we get rid of the supernatural altogether, 
 and reduce it to a mere domain of Nature. Further 
 consideration will no doubt show these timid critics 
 that this result will be no loss, but on the contrary 
 an enormous gain, if the great facts which we call 
 " spiritual," and which assure us of immortality 
 and of God, can be established as firmly as the 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 29 
 
 facts and laws of Nature are proved by scientific 
 research. Besides, such persons may take comfort 
 from the reflection that at all events, in another 
 sphere of existence, when we are able to take the 
 Divine view of all things, we shall assuredly per- 
 ceive the perfect oneness of God's rule, and the 
 essential identity of what we are obliged at present 
 to call the two worlds of Nature and G-race. Mean- 
 while, no doubt, the very largeness of the field 
 opened for speculation by the method pursued by 
 Professor Drummond has startled and even alarmed 
 some, and has caused some natural hesitation in 
 their judgment of the book. 
 
 And here let us remark that the aim of the 
 writer is not, as one of his critics supposes, to 
 present us with a complete system of religious 
 philosophy. He distinctly disclaims this preten- 
 sion when he says in his preface,^ *' The result of 
 the inquiry, so far as its expression in systematic 
 form is concerned, I have not given in this book. 
 To reconstruct a Spiritual Eeligion — for this is all 
 the method can pretend to — on the lines of Nature 
 would be an attempt from which one better equipped 
 in both directions might well be pardoned if he 
 shrank." He suggests a method which, if followed 
 out, might, indeed, produce a complete system, 
 
 1 " Natural Law in the Spiritual World,"' p. xii. 
 
30 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 but he certainly does not pretend to give us 
 one. 
 
 It is, of course, always most important, if we 
 w^ould make a true estimate of an author's work, 
 to grasp the idea which governed the writers 
 mind, and the failure to do this has, we think, 
 prevented some from doing justice to the real 
 value of the book. 
 
 Although, the book is so original, yet, as always 
 happens with any great formative truth, it has its 
 roots in the past. Almost all religious thinkers 
 have been struck with the apparent identity be- 
 tw^een certain facts and laws of Nature, and those 
 belonging to the higher region of mind and spirit. 
 Not only Archbishop Trench in the passage quoted 
 by Professor Drummond,^ but right down from the 
 earliest times it has been seen that the use of par- 
 able or allegory implies a great deal more than the 
 mere accidental likeness between two facts or sets 
 of events. Thus Tertullian says,^ ''All things here 
 are witnesses of a resurrection, all things in Nature 
 are prophetic outlines of Divine operations, God 
 not merely speaking parables, but doing them." 
 Again, " God holding out the hand to faith, which 
 He helps by means of likenesses and parables, both 
 
 1 " Natural Law," «Sic. Introduction, p. 8. 
 2 Quoted in Trench on Parables, p. 13. 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 31 
 
 by words and things." And Trench himself, in a 
 sentence even more appropriate to Mr. Drummond's 
 argument than the one he has quoted, and which 
 mio^ht almost be said to contain the crerm. of his 
 theory, says/ " There is a confident expectation in 
 the minds of men of the reappearance in higher 
 spheres of the same laws and relations which they 
 have recognised in the lower." The very parables 
 of our Lord almost compel us to believe that the 
 world of Nature is not only used as the picture 
 or shadow of the spiritual world, but as the lower 
 range of a world vaster than we can conceive, the 
 rehearsal on a lower plane of the laws which govern 
 the great unseen universe. That this is so, and 
 that the argument from analogy has infinitely more 
 coo-ency than was formerly allowed, seems to be the 
 dominant thought in the author of this remarkable 
 book. 
 
 In this light we may see that not only the first 
 and most noteworthy chapter — that on which we 
 propose to make some special remark — but the 
 subsidiary ones, such as those on " Degeneration," 
 "Growth," "Eternal Life," &c., have their place 
 and end to serve in his plan. It is true that 
 much which is said in these chapters " would be 
 correct if there were no spiritual life at all," that 
 
 1 Trench on Parables, p. 13. 
 
32 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 ''these are but the laws of life and mind," but if 
 the author can show that they are the laws of 
 spiritual life also, even though there is nothing 
 new in the statement, he has given new illustra- 
 tions of his main thought. Grant the spiritual 
 life (and this is necessary to any consideration of 
 its laws), and the well-know^n causes of growth 
 or degeneracy in the one w^orld are seen to be the 
 same as those in the other. 
 
 But the practical value of the book depends 
 upon the first chapter. Its reputation will stand 
 or fall with its doctrine of Biogenesis. The book 
 may indeed have a distinct value as the work of 
 a pioneer. We, at least, cannot doubt that time 
 will prove the general soundness of the argument 
 contained in the introduction. The author may 
 be wrong or defective in his application of the 
 method, but we can hardly doubt the soundness 
 of it, nor that some day the absolute unity of the 
 universe of God will be demonstrated, and the 
 apparent contradictions between the natural and 
 spiritual will be solved by the larger conception 
 which shall melt the two into one. 
 
 The author tells us that in the studies which 
 have resulted in the book before us, he did not 
 begin by tabulating doctrines, and then proceed 
 to match them with certain laws of Nature, but 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 33 
 
 he "ran np the natural law as far as it would 
 go," and the "appropriate doctrine burst into 
 view" as he reached the top.^ 
 
 That is, he thouo^ht rather as a scientist than a 
 theologian. He took, for instance, the facts in- 
 cluded in the scientific doctrine of Biogenesis, and 
 having considered what they are, and what they 
 tell of life in general, he asked what relation they 
 have to a super-sensuous world, the world of spirit, 
 and there finding the law of regeneration, it at once 
 appeared to him as the same law expressed not in 
 terms of Nature but of spirit. _ 
 
 Now while this is a perfectly correct method so 
 far as it goes, it is naturally the method of a 
 scientist. In order to complete the enquiry, it 
 seems to us that it will be necessary to reverse the 
 process, and bringing the theologian on the scene 
 let him enquire into the nature and significance of 
 the spiritual law of regeneration, and having done 
 so, look down into Nature and see if there be any 
 law there which answers to the spiritual, and what 
 modifications are needed in consequence of the 
 difference in the substances with which the law 
 has to deal. 
 
 If our readers would follow the line of Christian 
 
 1 Preface, p. xvii. 
 
34 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 thought upon this subject, from the earliest down 
 to our own times, they would probably be sur- 
 prised at the remarkable unanimity among Chris- 
 tian thinkers. No doubt controversies have arisen 
 upon this subject, and various theories have been 
 put forward to explain the nature and seat and 
 occasion of the change known as regeneration — 
 theories rendered respectable in modern days by 
 such names as Schleiermacher, Ebrard, and 
 Delitzsch. But even among these there is a 
 general agreement upon the two main points, 
 viz., the reality and depth of the change, and 
 its supernatural source. 
 
 Indeed we can go back even to times before the 
 Christian era, and into the regions of Greek philo- 
 sophy, and find witnesses to these great facts of 
 human consciousness. Bushnell gives a most re- 
 markable and suggestive set of extracts from Plato 
 and others which seem almost like evangelical 
 statements, and all of which tend to exhibit, among 
 the Greeks, a deep conviction of the necessity of 
 an inward and supernatural change in the human 
 heart. Plato says, '' If we have rightly conceived 
 the case, virtue is acquired neither by Nature's 
 force, nor by any institutes of discipline or teach- 
 ing, but it comes to those who have it by a certain 
 Divine inspiration, over and above the mind's own 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 35 
 
 force or exertion." ^ And again, " That beatitude 
 or spiritual liberty is only to have the demon (that 
 is, the guiding spirit alluded to by Socrates) dwell- 
 ing in us." ^ Seneca says, " No one is able to clear 
 himself, let some one give him a hand, let some 
 one lead him out." ^ 
 
 It may be well to append a few short sentences 
 from writers since the Eeformation to indicate 
 more clearly this general consent upon the sub- 
 ject. Luther himself says, in a comment on the 
 conversation between Christ and Nicodemus, ''My 
 teaching is not of doing and leaving undone, but 
 of a change in the man." * Calvin tells us that " by 
 the words, born again, he means, not the correction 
 of one part, but the renovation of the whole nature, 
 whence," says he, " it follows, that there is nothing 
 in us except what is evil." ^ 
 
 Hengstenberg, in his commentary on the same 
 conversation, says, "An entirely new beginning 
 must be made in opposition to the opinion that 
 only a continued building on the ground of Nature 
 is needed."^ Ebrard declares that "the most hidden 
 substantial germ of our being is born again in re- 
 generation, not merely changed, but re-born." ^ 
 
 1 Meno., 89. Quoted by Bushnell in "Nature and the Super- 
 natural," p. 166. 2 Theages, 128. ^ Ep., 52. 
 ^ Stier, iv. 17. ^ Hengstenberg on John, p. 162. 
 6 Hengstenberg on John, p. 161. ^ Dogmatic. Vol. II., p. 20. 
 
36 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 Stier speaks in a manner singularly similar to 
 the language used by Professor Drummond. " We 
 cannot of ourselves, of our own knowledge and 
 will, come into the kingdom of God ; but that 
 kingdom comes down to us, through a new and 
 heavenly birth by the spirit of God." ^ 
 
 Y,ery similar are the definitions and statements 
 of our more recent English writers of the broader 
 school of theology. 
 
 " It is therefore declared," says Bushnell, '' as 
 the necessary condition of our salvation, that we 
 must be born again, born not of blood, nor of the 
 will of the flesh, but of God ; and this great change 
 is the beginning and spring of all true, heavenly 
 virtue, because it is the revelation of God in the 
 soul " — " Eegeneration is, in fact, the soul's as- 
 sumption, or resumption by God." ^ 
 
 We must go further than these statements, how- 
 ever, if we would be able to represent, in an 
 intelligible form of thought, the truth expressed 
 by the word regeneration. We must ask what a 
 radical change means, and how far we can trace 
 and define the Divine agency. Here we come 
 upon the controversial ground to which we have 
 alluded above, which, happily, we need not tread. 
 
 1 Stier's "Reden Jesu," p. 382. 
 
 2 " Nature and tlie Supernatural," p. 272. 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 37 
 
 This is not the place to enter upon an elaborate 
 theological discussioD, but we may indicate the 
 lines alone which a true conclusion can be reached. 
 The New Testament expressions respecting the 
 new birth are doubtless very striking and very 
 strono-. ** Ye must be born ag^ain." '' That which 
 is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born 
 of the Spirit is spirit." **If any man be in Christ, 
 there is a new creation." "It is the Spirit that 
 quickeneth." "He that hath the Son hath life, 
 and he that hath not the Son, hath not life." In 
 such passages as these, the Scriptural doctrine 
 seems clearly and strongly laid down ; and no fair- 
 minded student of the New Testament can deny 
 that its writings are steeped in a supernaturalism 
 of the nature thus suggested. According to this 
 doctrine, a man cannot by any mere exertion of 
 will or effort become partaker of the spiritual life 
 offered to him by God. Nicodemus could not 
 come into the Divine kingdom, could not see it, 
 by merely redoubling his attention to Jewish rites 
 and Jewish teachers — as Ebel of Konigsberg says, 
 " It is not doctrine, but life that is concerned." 
 
 The Apostle Paul bears his personal testimony 
 to the reality of such a change, and by his own 
 experience explains Christ's doctrine. " It pleased 
 God, who gave me natural birth, and called me by 
 
38 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 His grace, to reveal His Son in me;" ^ and ''By 
 the grace of God I am what I am." ^ We may and 
 do likewise appeal to the Christian consciousness 
 of all ages, and we find one almost invariable 
 testimony in favour of the doctrine that spiritual 
 life is something different from the life of Nature ; 
 and even when men deny the doctrine in their 
 creeds, they admit it in their hymns and prayers. 
 Indeed a hymn book is one of the most wonderful 
 evidences we possess of the essential oneness of all 
 Christian sects with reference to the fundamental 
 principles of Christianity. 
 
 But we shall naturally ask — Are there no other 
 Christian experiences, and no other Scriptural 
 statements which seem opposed to such a doctrine ? 
 Most assuredly there are. Scripture may seem to 
 make spiritual life a gift altogether indepeudent 
 of human will, and Christian consciousness may 
 devoutly acknowledge and praise Cod as the only 
 Giver of Life ; and yet Scripture appeals to a 
 power of choice in man ; and men are as conscious 
 of the possession of such a power as they are of 
 supernatural aid. There is no doubt an apparent 
 contradiction here, and one which has given rise to 
 numberless controversies, and which has actually 
 thrown theologians into two great camps — the 
 
 1 Galatians i. 15. ^ 1 Corinthians x v. la 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON", B.A. 39 
 
 Augustinian aud Pelagian ; or, in more modern 
 phrase, the Calvinist and Arminian. In the one, 
 the passages which speak of Divine agency and 
 human infirmity are put foremost, and the other 
 class of passages made by some Procrustean process 
 to agree with them ; and in the other the opposite 
 method is adopted, and the latter are made the 
 basis of a system to which the former are made to 
 yield. The "New Theology," so called by the 
 most recent expounder of it, ''does not differ 
 essentially from the old in its treatment of re- 
 generation, but it broadens the ground of it, finding 
 its necessity not only in sin, but in the undeveloped 
 nature of man, or in the flesh. It is disposed, also, 
 to regard it as a process involving known laws and 
 analogies, and to divest it of that air of magical 
 mystery in which it has been held — a plain and 
 simple matter by which one gets out of the lower 
 into the higher by the Spirit of God." ^ 
 
 If the writer of this paragraph means that any 
 explanation of the process whereby a man gets 
 " out of the lower into the higher," can rob it of 
 mystery, we think he is grievously mistaken ; and 
 if such an explanation were possible, it would rob 
 the truth of the very element of supernaturalism 
 which gives it value. The very words, " by the 
 
 1 Munger's " Freedom of Faith," p. ^^. 
 
40 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 Spirit of God," reproduce the mystery, and we 
 may safely say that until our ideas of "life" are 
 robbed of mystery, such a profound spiritual fact 
 as the regeneration of a human soul, can never 
 become " a plain and simple matter." 
 
 But it is evident that to satisfy the Scriptural 
 statements on this subject and the experience of 
 men, we have to grant two apparently contra- 
 dictory propositions : the inability of man to rise 
 into a spiritual life by any effort of his own, and 
 yet the indefeasible right and actual power inherent 
 in the human will to choose the good or eviL In 
 this we come very near the ultimate contradiction, 
 so powerfully wrought out in Mansell's famous 
 Bampton Lecture, between the absolute and the 
 conditioned. But we do not think that we are 
 necessarily driven against this blank wall. The 
 doctrine of regeneration can, we think, be stated 
 without involving this hopeless contradiction. It 
 is well to note the consequences of too sweeping 
 and unlimited assertions on the one side or the 
 other. For it is in its logical consequence that 
 we see the real nature of an assertion. The con- 
 sequences of an uncompromising Calvinistic creed, 
 are well stated by a writer in the Expositor, 
 " One logical and direct consequence is that for 
 the vast majority of men there is no hope at all." 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 41 
 
 '' If men are blind and dead in this sense, i.e, 
 unable to stir or move, to what end except to mock 
 their helplessness and misery, does the Gospel of 
 the grace of God summon them to awake and arise 
 that Christ may give them life *? " ^ 
 
 Such an absolute and one-sided statement as we 
 sometimes meet with of man's inability and the 
 sovereignty of Divine grace, necessarily excludes 
 all human responsibility, and narrows the Gospel 
 of Christ to a religion of even smaller scope than 
 Judaism, and absolutely reverses all Paul's exultant 
 declarations of its grandeur and universality. 
 
 On the other hand, if we take note only of the 
 other class of passages, and preach and speak as 
 though the spiritual life could be attained by the 
 mere exercise of human will and effort, do we not 
 indeed, in Professor Drummond's words, "render 
 the whole scheme of the Christian reliction abor- 
 tive"? What becomes of Christ's teachins: to 
 Nicodemus ? of Apostolic doctrine ? of the Chris- 
 tian experience of all ages ? If man can save 
 himself by his own effort on the plane of his 
 common human nature, what is the function of 
 Christianity ? Why did Christ live and die ? 
 Surely it must be evident that Christianity is a 
 supernatural religion or it is nothing. 
 
 ^ Expositor for January, 1884, p. 24. 
 
42 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 But let us enlarge our conceptions of tKe Divine 
 work. Let us cease to permit our ideas to be 
 confined within the narrow circle of any theolo- 
 gical school. Let us try to rise to a point at which 
 we can see both sides of the truth. Is it not 
 credible, and in view of the whole revelation of 
 the Divine Fatherhood more than credible, that the 
 Spirit of God is present in the hearts of all His 
 children? or rather, let us say (using, in both 
 cases, of course, a figure of speech), is ever around 
 and near to all of us, — that He is constantly wait- 
 ing for us to yield to His love, — that in a thousand 
 secret and indefinable ways He is urging us to yield 
 to His influence and receive His renovating grace ? 
 May we not perceive, too, that the coming of 
 Christ was really the expression in terms of finite 
 space and time — -at one point — visibly — before the 
 eyes of all men — of the process which had been 
 going on from the beginning, and is proceeding 
 everywhere — that God was always and is always 
 redeeming men; and that this is the meaning of 
 the expression, '' The Lamb slain from the founda- 
 tion of the world " ? 
 
 Only by this interposition and continued in- 
 dwelling of God can men rise into spiritual life, 
 the life of Christ ; but this is accessible to all, for 
 *' God is not far from any one of us." It would 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 43 
 
 be altogether unlike what we know of the Divine 
 government to suppose that God would bestow 
 upon any the choicest gifts without some act of 
 choice on the part of the recipient. The very 
 story of the entrance of sin by an act of wrongful 
 choice indicates more strongly than anything could 
 do, the value the Creator sets upon the freedom of 
 the human will. Besides, experience corroborates 
 the inferences from Scripture, for though each man 
 thankfully attributes his better desires and purer 
 aspirations to the influence of the Holy Spirit, yet 
 is he perfectly conscious, not only of a single act, 
 but of a continual exertion of choice in accepting the 
 grace ofi'ered to him in the Gospel. Our conception 
 of the world in relation to God, then, is that of a 
 vast family, among which invisibly, and often 
 unrecoo-nised, the Divine Father moves ; that all 
 life, the lowest as well as the highest, is His gift, 
 and is directly sustained by His influence. He is 
 secretly guiding all events, gradually revealing 
 Himself to mankind, and so making more intel- 
 ligible appeals to their conscience, giving, mean- 
 while, large and, what seems to us, who are unable 
 to survey the vast field and scope of His purposes, 
 extravagant freedom to the human will, but so 
 ruling and guiding even the results of free choice, 
 as to work on towards a better condition. 
 
44 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 One part of His work seems to consist in a 
 general influence exerted in and through the events 
 of history, which tends to a gradual uplifting and 
 moral development of the race ; the other part 
 consists of a special and spiritual influence upon 
 individual character, called by us regeneration, 
 whereby a man becomes possessed of the very life 
 of God, the higher spiritual power which can only 
 become ours by communion with a spiritual envir- 
 onment. A man in the act or process of conversion, 
 therefore, recognises facts. He comes to see what 
 is; to realise to himself what is already real, the 
 redeeming love of God ; the right of God to perfect 
 obedience, and the true happiness which comes to 
 man along that path. He does not lift himself up 
 to this. He cannot. So long as he is on the mere 
 plane of Nature, he is outside this Divine kingdom. 
 But "the chamber is not only ready to receive the 
 new life, but the Guest is expected, and, till He 
 comes, is missed. Till then the soul yearns and 
 longs, wastes and pines, waving its tentacles 
 piteously in the empty air, feeling after God, if so 
 be that it may find Him." ^ And when this hunger 
 of the soul becomes articulate, and by the approach 
 of God man comes to understand ivhat it is after 
 which he is feeling, then, perhaps simultaneously, 
 
 1 " Natural Law in the Spiritual World," p. 300. 
 
THE EEV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 45 
 
 perhaps by immediate sequence, come tlie choice 
 of the soul, and the touch of God which quickens 
 the spirit into new life. Time and space are not 
 entities here. We speak because we are obliged 
 to think in terms of time and space. But with 
 reference to God these words lose their meaning. 
 We say "then" because it seems to us "then." 
 To God "then" and "now" are one and the same. 
 Sequence is for us. God dwells in eternity — the 
 timeless world. 
 
 Before we attempt to look for the natural ana- 
 logue to this supernatural process, we must attempt 
 a partial reply to one question which will certainly 
 rise to the lips of thoughtful men. In this great 
 process of the ages, this vast scheme of human 
 redemption, what becomes of the multitudes of 
 human beings whose lives seem to be only used as 
 stepping-stones for advancing generations? Are 
 the myriads who have died and are dying every 
 day either too young, or too deeply sunk in an 
 io-norance from which they have no escape, even to 
 conceive of a spiritual nature, — are these merely 
 " cast as rubbish to the void " ? Some persons 
 seem to be able to believe that. We cannot. 
 And there is no necessity to believe it. We need 
 only enlarge our ideas and let them partake some- 
 what more of the Divine greatness. To us the 
 
46 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 few years of earthly existence seem loDg and all- 
 importaut. All-important they may be, just as 
 the years of school-life are all-important to man- 
 hood. But surely God does not regard our seventy 
 years as we do. We must, if we would live and 
 teach Christianity in these days of ever- widening 
 benevolence, we must believe that the process of 
 redemption which is going on in this world is 
 continued beyond the w^orld, at least for all who 
 have not come within its beneficent reach here. 
 There is no question here of the fate of the man 
 who deliberately rejects the Divine ofifer of help, 
 and elects to live out his lower life with all its 
 results ; but of the millions upon millions of our 
 fellow-creatures who, w^ith aflections and powers 
 like our own, pass away from earthly life without 
 a glimpse of that light which to us makes the 
 shadow of death but the dawn of a new day, what 
 can be said ? Unless we are prepared to accuse 
 the Infinite Father of such a waste of human life 
 as is awful and heartrending even to imagine, we 
 must believe that the Divine scheme of redemption 
 is not bounded by the limitations of our brief life, 
 nor confined within the bounds of mere imperfect 
 and finite conceptions of space and time. 
 
 To such a point, then, has the theologian, with the 
 aid of modern research and modern thouirht, come. 
 
THE REV. r. W. DARNTON, B.A. 47 
 
 and Laving reached sucli conclusions re^^pecting the 
 regeneration of man, he surveys more critically the 
 world of Nature. lie knows something of the 
 doctrine of " the law of continuity," and the more 
 profound his conviction of the unity of God, tlie 
 more inclined will he be to expect to find the same 
 ideas reproduced, with necessary modifications, in 
 various domains of the universe. With these con- 
 victions and feelings he is told of the law of Bioge- 
 nesis in the realm of Nature. He sees that life 
 here can only spring from life ; that such a thing 
 as spontaneous generation is unknown among the 
 phenomena of Nature. He is struck by the simi- 
 liarity between the scientific statements of this fact, 
 and Scriptural statements of the doctrine of re- 
 generation. The process, indeed, goes on in his 
 mind, wliicli Professor Drummond describes as 
 *' enunciating spiritual law in the exact terms of 
 Biology and Physics." Is he right in concluding 
 that he has found the equivalent in Nature to the 
 law of regeneration of the human spirit — that the 
 law by which alone the mineral kingdom can rise 
 into the organic, namely, by the touch of life from 
 the kingdom above it, is the same, only on a lo\ver 
 plane, as the law by which a man can only become 
 a member of the kingdom of heaven, by the touch 
 of the Divine Spirit ? We think the philosophical 
 
48 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 thinker would be riglit in, at all events, provi- 
 sionally, coming to this conclusion. But he can 
 only do so provisionally until he has well considered, 
 not only the superficial similiarity, but the differ- 
 ence of these two domains of the same law. The 
 law may be one and the same, but the mode of its 
 action may be exceedingly different. Every law is 
 modified in its action by every other law in its own 
 domain, and the mode in which a scientist would 
 talk of the passing of the inorganic into the organic 
 will not, or at least ought not, to be the same as 
 that in which a Christian teacher will talk of the 
 new birth of a human souL And why ? Because 
 of the difference between the mass of organic matter 
 and the highly-organised object in Nature called a 
 man. It is here, we think, that Professor Drum- 
 mond has made a fatal mistake. Perhaps, indeed, 
 we may rather call it an omission than a misstate- 
 ment, but it is radical. He seems to have foro^otten 
 for the moment what he has allowed elsewhere, 
 both in the paragraph quoted above and in the 
 whole scope of the argument of such chapters as 
 those on " Degeneration," " Parasitism," &c. There 
 he acknowledges man's responsibility. Here, when 
 he is developing the doctrine of Biogenesis, he 
 simply ignores it. He may have a special purpose 
 in doing so, though it is not easy to see what it 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 49 
 
 can be, but evidently such an enormous difference 
 exists between the two worlds that it cannot be 
 ignored. Inorganic matter, blind, helpless, abso- 
 lutely without life of any kind, cannot be the proper 
 analogue of the living, active soul, with its wonderful 
 capacities and power of choice. What difference, 
 then, will this contrast make to the statement of 
 the law 1 It will make no difference to the fact. 
 The law of Biogenesis is true with relation to the 
 passage of the vegetable to the animal world, as 
 well as with reference to the lower, inorganic world. 
 And it is true higher up — with reference to the 
 birth of mans lower nature into the world of 
 spiritual life. But the expression of the law must 
 be modified by the influence of surrounding laws. 
 " The world of natural men is staked off from the 
 spiritual world by barriers which have never yet 
 been crossed from within." *'The spiritual world 
 is guarded from the next in order beneath it by a 
 law of Biogenesis." ^ Is that true 1 True, if we 
 remember that we are uttering facts respecting the 
 plastic, living soul of man in the hard, unsym- 
 pathetic language of science, and that though the 
 hio-her life is not accessible by " moral effort " or 
 "evolution of character," it is so close to every 
 man, so constantly pressing upon him, and seeking 
 
 1 Page 71. 
 
50 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 an entrance, that a single act of will can break 
 down the barrier, and admit him into the sacred 
 precincts. False, utterly false, if the words are 
 intended to exclude all except the few who, without 
 their own choice, without any apparent reason 
 even on God's part, are arbitrarily admitted into a 
 AA^orld which they never desired and never sought. 
 We do not believe the latter to be the meaning of 
 Professor Drummond, though we are sure that the 
 hard, incisive, pitiless way in which he states the 
 law must go far to prejudice many minds against 
 his whole argument. Admit the facts of which the 
 mind is conscious, admit the function of the human 
 will in the religious life of man, and this natural 
 law of Biogenesis is readily received as the expres- 
 sion on the lower plane of Nature of the great truth 
 or doctrine of regeneration in the higher. The 
 actual sway of a law does not depend upon 
 the nature of the substance which it governs, 
 though the expression of it may do so. The in- 
 organic world, which is raised into a new life by 
 "the bending down of some living form,^' possesses 
 certain endowments. It contains substances neces- 
 sary for the life and growth of the higher organisms. 
 If we can so far exercise our imagination as to sup- 
 pose it also endowed, like the leaf of a sensitive 
 plant, with the power of yielding to or resistiug 
 
THE REV. P. W. DARNTON, B.A. 51 
 
 this touch of life from above, we shall have a still 
 closer analogy to the substances which in the form 
 of human souls — beinos endowed with thone^ht and 
 will — the law has to do with it in its his/her rang;es. 
 The choice of the Divine service no more and no 
 less presupposes the possession of spiritual life than 
 the "longing and yearning" of which Professor 
 Drummond speaks. But the fact that God waits 
 on every man's need, and is accessible to every 
 man's choice, does rob the doctrine of Biogenesis of 
 all that is cruel and repellent. 
 
 It has been suggested by one writer,^ and it is a 
 happy and pregnant suggestion, that " the regene- 
 rating agency of the Spirit of God in the human 
 soul is most fitly symbolised by the agency of the 
 organising intelligence which guides the evolution 
 of every living being." We do not see that 
 there is any opposition between this and Professor 
 Drummond's view of Bios^enesis. The " orc^anisino: 
 Intelligence " must begin to work at some point. 
 As has already been said, we believe that this 
 ororanisinor Intelliofence is, in fact, working^ amono: 
 mankind everywhere and always. But, evidently, 
 we must except those individual souls from which 
 it is excluded by the man himself who does not 
 
 ^ British Quarterly Eevieiv. No. 143. Art. "Evolulion viewed 
 in its relation 10 Theology." See also No. 159. 
 
52 BIOGENESIS. 
 
 desire and will not tolerate its presence, and we 
 must allow that w^e do not see any effects of its 
 presence in the vast multitudes of the ignorant and 
 degenerating heathen. But where the man responds 
 to the gracious influence of God's Spirit, which, 
 like the all-encircling air, presses upon the whole 
 surface of the man's being, seeking constantly an 
 entrance, there at once the new life is imparted. 
 And it is at this point, the initial stage of the 
 evolution, that the law of Biogenesis appears. We 
 venture to say that if Professor Drummond will 
 supply this one defect, which we have endeavoured 
 to point out, and if he will apply to his speculations 
 upon the doctrine of Biogenesis the principles of 
 the remainder of the book he will win the adhe- 
 sion and grateful acknowledgment of a large and 
 widening circle of readers. 
 
III. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 By the Kev. Prof. A. W. MOMERIE, D.Sc, LL.D. 
 
 THE theory of evolution leaves one half of the 
 universe completely unaccounted for, viz., the 
 mental half Just think. You can conceive the 
 development of complicated material structures 
 from simpler forms of matter. You can conceive, 
 for example, that the original cloud of fiery gas 
 may have been split up, under the influence of 
 gravitation, into several distinct masses of nebulous 
 matter, and that each of these separate masses may 
 have become a solar system, by throwing ofi" rings 
 of vapour which eventually condensed into planets. 
 You can conceive that protoplasm may have been 
 formed by the union, under chemical influences, 
 of certain inorganic elements ; that from proto- 
 plasm came, first monera, and then cells ; that 
 these cells multiplied by subdivision, and after- 
 wards united together for the building up of 
 
54 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 complex vegetable or animal organisms ; and that 
 organisms have gone on developing into more 
 and more complicated and perfect forms. But 
 you cannot conceive that, from any combination 
 of material atoms, immaterial consciousness has 
 been evolved. A being conscious of his unity 
 cannot possibly be formed out of a number of 
 atoms, unconscious of their diversity. Any one 
 who thinks this possible is capable of asserting 
 that half-a-dozen fools might be compounded into 
 a single wise man. 
 
 This is sometimes admitted by the acutest of 
 the agnostics. Call to mind, e.g., some remarks 
 of Tyndall's : — " Tiie passage from the physics of 
 the brain to the corresponding facts of conscious- 
 ness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 
 thought and a definite molecular action in the 
 brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the 
 intellectual organ, nor apparently the rudiments of 
 an organ, which would enable us to pass, by a pro- 
 cess of reasoning, from the one to the other. They 
 appear together, but we do not know why." This 
 paragraph is quoted with approval by John Stuart 
 Mill Since, then, the passage from the brain 
 to consciousness is unthinkable, it has not been 
 thought by evolutionists. Since the connection 
 between physical processes and sensations is an 
 
THE REV. PROF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 55 
 
 insoluble problem, it lias not been solved by the 
 evolutionists. They themselves being judges, 
 consciousness is something which lies altogether 
 outside the sphere of evolution. 
 
 Evidently, then, those who assert that modern 
 physical science accounts for the whole universe, 
 say what is not true. The insufficiency of the 
 theory of evolution is curiously illustrated by 
 several recent attempts to intellectualise matter. 
 It is now often maintained by physicists, in a 
 vague, indefinite way, that everything material 
 has a mental side. At the close of his essay on 
 " Scientific Materialism," Tyndall gives us an elo- 
 quent description of his musings on the top of 
 the Matterhorn : — " Hacked and hurt by time, 
 the aspect of the mountain, from its higher crags, 
 saddened me. Hitherto the impression it made 
 was that of savage strength; here we had inex- 
 orable decay. But this notion of decay implied 
 a reference to a period when the Matterhorn was 
 in the full strength of mountainhood. Thought 
 naturally ran back to its remoter origin and sculp- 
 ture. Nor did thought halt there, but wandered 
 on through molten worlds to that nebulous haze 
 which philosophers have regarded as the source of 
 all material things. I tried to look at this uni- 
 versal cloud as containing within itself the predic- 
 
56 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 tion of all that has occurred. I tried to imao^ine 
 it as the seat of those forces, whose action was to 
 issue in solar and stellar systems and all that thev 
 involve. Did that formless fog contain potentially 
 the sadness with which I regarded the Matterhorn ? 
 Did the thought which now ran back to it simply 
 return to its primeval home. If so, had we not 
 better recast our definitions of matter and force ? 
 For if life and thought be the very flower of both, 
 any definition which omits life and thought must 
 be inadequate, if not untrue." There is a similar 
 and more frequently quoted passage at the close 
 of the Belfast Address. The Professor cites with 
 approval Bruno's saying — " Matter is not the mere 
 empty capacity which philosophers have pictured 
 her to be, but the universal mother, who brings 
 forth all things as the fruit of her own womb." 
 ''And," continues Tyndall, "believing as I do in 
 the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly 
 when our microscopes cease to be of use. Here 
 the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements 
 the vision of the eye. By a necessity engendered 
 and justified by science, I cross the boundary of 
 experimental evidence, and discern in that matter 
 ^ — which we in our ignorance of its latent powers, 
 ^ and notwithstanding our professed reverence for 
 iis Creator, have hitherto covered with oppro- 
 
 (, 
 
THE EEV. PHOF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 57 
 
 brium — the promise and potency of all terrestrial 
 life." 
 
 Haeckel, also, talks very much in the same way 
 in the preface to his " History of Creation." He, 
 too, quotes a saying of Bruno, to the effect that 
 "a spirit exists in all things, and no body is so 
 small but it contains a part of the Divine substance 
 within itself, by which it is animated." Haeckel 
 also quotes Goethe's remark that "matter can never 
 exist and be active without mind." And he adds 
 — " All bodies are equally animated ; wherever 
 there is corporeal substance, there is also mental 
 power." 
 
 Similarly the late Professor Clifford, in an in- 
 genious but highly illogical essay upon the nature 
 of things in themselves, proceeding upon the double 
 fallacy of maintaining that feelings can exist with- 
 out some one to feel them, and that a number of 
 such impossible feelings, linked together in a certain 
 complicated manner, will give rise to a self-con- 
 scious personality — Clifford asserts that the mole- 
 cules of matter, though devoid of mind, " possess 
 a small piece of mind stuff." In other words, every 
 molecule is an unfelt feeling ; and consciousness is 
 just a combination of molecules, which are indivi- 
 dually unconscious. The universe thus consists, 
 he says, entirely of mind-stuff. 
 
58 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 From these quotations you will see it is ad- 
 mitted by many of tlie acutest agnostics that the 
 evolution of matter — in the ordinary sense of the 
 term matter — would never have given rise to con- 
 sciousness. They therefore tell us, parenthetically 
 and incidentally, that when we talk of matter we 
 must remember something mental always goes 
 along with it. It follows, then, on their own 
 showing, that the universe, as we know it, has 
 not come from gas and gravitation alone — using 
 those words in their ordinary signification — but 
 from gas and gravitation ]plus something mental. 
 Very well. That something mental I will not at 
 present say must, but at any rate may, have de- 
 signed and controlled the evolutionary develop- 
 ment of the gravitating gas. 
 
 But it is constantly assumed by materialists 
 that the proof of evolution is the disproof of 
 God. And agnostics suppose that if the theory 
 has not actually disproved the Divine existence, 
 it has at least destroyed all positive evidence in 
 favour of it. " When," says Haeckel, " Teleologi- 
 cal Dualism seeks the arbitrary thoughts of a 
 capricious Creator in the miracles of creation, 
 Causal Monism finds in the process of develop- 
 ment the necessary effects of eternal, immutable 
 laws of Nature." The whole view of Haeckel 
 
THE REV. PROF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 59 
 
 may be summed up in a sentence from Lucretius : 
 " Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of 
 herself, without the meddliuo; of the o-ods." 
 
 Now my answer to Haeckel, and to the agnostics 
 generally, is this. They fail to distinguish between 
 two kinds of purpose — one changeable, the other 
 unchaugeable. With the latter, evolution is not 
 incompatible. On the contrary, that doctrine in- 
 evitably leads up to a Being who is the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It is changeable 
 purpose alone with which evolution is inconsistent. 
 Evolutionists have taught us that the present sys- 
 tem of things cannot be due to a purpose which 
 continually contradicts itself. They have shown 
 us that the development of Nature is not inter- 
 fered with by a capricious and changeable mind. 
 And upon this important subject the world stood 
 much in need of their teaching. 
 
 Men have too often made gods after their own 
 image. Even civilised nations have frequently 
 believed in a deity who was but a man "writ 
 large" — a very indifferent, sixth-rate kind of man 
 into the bargain. Think, for example, of the old 
 view of creation, which, owing to the authority 
 of Cuvier and Agassiz, was long received as the 
 orthodox doctrine. According to this theory, there 
 were a series of quite distinct periods of creation, 
 
60 EVOLUTION AKD DESIGN. 
 
 and each period had its peculiar flora and fauna. 
 These periods were separated from one another by 
 revolutions of an unknown kind, called cataclysms 
 or catastrophes ; and each revolution resulted in 
 the utter extinction of the then existing animals 
 and plants. Afterwards a completely new set of 
 organisms was created ; and these existed on the 
 globe for thousands of years, till they in their turn 
 perished suddenly in the crash of a new revolution. 
 Haeckel's caustic remarks upon this doctrine cannot 
 be considered unjust. "According to this view," 
 he says, " the Creator is nothing but a mighty 
 man, who, plagued with ennuij amuses Himself 
 with planning and constructing varied toys in the 
 shape of organic species. After having diverted 
 Himself with these for thousands of years, they 
 become tiresome to Him, and He destroys them by 
 a general revolution of the earth's surface. Then, 
 in order to while away His time. He calls a new 
 organic world into existence. At the end of 
 thousands of millions of years He is struck with 
 the hap]Dy thought of creating something like 
 Himself, and man appears upon the scene, who 
 gives the Creator so much to do that He is wearied 
 no longer, and therefore need not undertake any 
 new creation." But perhaps men's thoughts of 
 God never reached a lower point than in the 
 
THE REV. PROF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 61 
 
 grotesque attempts wliicli were made, during the 
 Middle Ages, to account for the existence of fossils. 
 It was, for example, seriously asserted they were 
 the rouo'h models which the Creator had first made 
 out of mineral substances — models which He after- 
 wards copied in the living organisms of animals 
 and plants ! 
 
 And much later than the Middle Ages, down 
 even to the present century, the relation of the 
 Creator to Nature was often conceived of in a way 
 that was nothing short of blasphemous. Nature 
 was thought to be so imperfect a production, that 
 the Deity could only make it answer His purpose 
 by constant intervention and readjustment. He had 
 not foreseen the end from the beginning. Circum- 
 stances were always arising for which no provision 
 had been made. He was everlastingly changing the 
 course of Nature; and, sad to say, He usually changed 
 it for the worse. He was always seen in what was 
 terrible aud appalling. He had nothing to do with 
 the beauty of an autumn evening, or the stillness 
 of a moonlight night ; with the merriment of 
 youth, or the happiness of manhood, or the peace- 
 fulness of old age. lu such cases things were 
 but taking their normal course. But in agony, 
 disaster, horror, men always recognised, as they 
 thought, the finger of God. These were the 
 
62 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 unmistakable tokens of His presence. If the light- 
 ning struck a man dead, it was a sign that the 
 Deity was angry. If an earthquake or a pestilence 
 occurred, He was beside Himself with fury. Any 
 peculiarly loathsome disease was technically called 
 "a visitation from God." If a mother lost her 
 darling child, it was because the Almighty was 
 jealous that the poor little creature should have 
 received so much of her love. The temper of this 
 Deity, however, was fitful. You could never be 
 certain what He would be at. Occasionally He 
 forgot to be angry. In His ungodlike capricious- 
 ness He had favourites, for whose sakes He would 
 sometimes work miracles of benediction. But this 
 benediction generally involved disaster to those 
 who were not His favourites. The many were 
 plundered that the few might be enriched. And 
 the favourites, having been selected by caprice, 
 were almost sure, sooner or later, to be by caprice 
 rejected. He would by-and-by repent Him of His 
 choice. Altogether, His position in the universe 
 was that of an eternal curse ! If He had but let 
 the world alone, it might have been a pleasant 
 place enough, and men might have lived a happy 
 life. But He would not let thincTs be. He was 
 always interfering, and always doing harm. Where- 
 ever He went, He left ruin and misery in His trail. 
 
THE REV. PROF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 63 
 
 He assumed many names, but His real name was 
 Hate! 
 
 Now that is tlie kind of Deity whose existence 
 has been disproved by the evolutionists. They 
 have sbown, once and for ever, that our world is 
 not governed, or rather misgoverned, by omnipo- 
 ])Otent caprice. And for the establishment of this 
 important truth rational theology will be for ever 
 indebted to them. To believe in evolution, is to 
 be saved at least from the deorradation of mistakinnr 
 
 o o 
 
 for God a purely imaginary being, who, if he really 
 existed, would excite the hatred and the scorn of 
 every noble-hearted man. How was it that men 
 who believed in the omnipotence of a fickle fiend 
 such as I have described, did not curse him to his 
 face ? It was because they were cowards. The 
 falseness of their religion had so corrupted their 
 moral sense, that, in order to keep out of hell, 
 they were ready to barter their very souls. But 
 never again, thanks to the evolutionists, will this 
 terrible dilemma be repeated. Science has vindi- 
 cated — unconsciously it may be, but none the 
 less really — vindicated the character of the Deity 
 from the aspersions which for ages had been 
 cast upon it. And if now we believe in God at 
 all, we find no difficulty in w^orship. The fact 
 that in Him we live, anl move, and have our 
 
64 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 being, is at once our deepest joy and our highest 
 glory. 
 
 But purpose is not necessarily fickle. The inten- 
 tions of a reasonable being, just in proportion to 
 his reasonableness, will be steadfast and fixed. 
 To prove that Nature bears no traces of the one 
 kind of purpose, is certainly not equivalent to 
 showinfif that she bears no traces of the other. 
 Though she is not irregularly interfered with, she 
 may be, nevertheless, regularly controlled. 
 
 .And there is another important oversight which 
 you will generally find in the writings of evolution- 
 ists. They frequently assume that organisms have 
 not been designed at all, because their various parts 
 have not been separately and individually designed. 
 It used to be thought, for example, that the eye, 
 in every species of animal possessing that organ, 
 had been, in each case, directly manufactured by 
 God. Whereas we now know that any particular 
 organ in one species is merely an evolution from' a 
 somewhat difi'erent kind of organ in another species. 
 But the absence of particular purpose is no evi- 
 dence whatever for the absence of a general and 
 all-embracing purpose. Though the eyes of animals 
 have not been separately created, the possibility of 
 vision may still have been intended to emerge in 
 the process of evolution. Though the parts of 
 
THE EEV. PROF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 65 
 
 Nature may not indicate several purposes, the whole 
 of Nature may testify to one. 
 
 Everywhere around us there are what seem to 
 he signs of purpose; and these appearances are 
 multiplied ten thousandfold by scientific investiga- 
 tion. If you want to see how Nature teems with 
 contrivances, adaptations, expedients, mechanisms, 
 read the works of Darwin. It is remarkable, too, 
 that those who are loudest in deuyiug the existence 
 of purpose, are constantly using the very word which 
 they declare to be illegitimate. Haeckel, for ex- 
 ample, in the very book in which he says that 
 " the much-talked-of purpose in Nature has no 
 existence," defines an organic body as "one in 
 which the various parts work together for the pur- 
 pose of producing the phenomena of life." And 
 this is no slip of the pen, as you will see from his 
 description of the manner in which an organic body 
 is built up. The most complicated animal or vege- 
 table organism, he says, is merely a combination of 
 the little nucleated lumps of protoplasm called cells. 
 The building up of an organism by these cells he 
 compares to the formation of a state. The simple 
 cells, he says, at first exist in an isolated condition, 
 each performing the same kind of work, and being 
 satisfied with self-preservation, nutrition, and re- 
 production. " This condition of afi'airs corresponds 
 
66 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 to a community of human beings as yet uncivilised. 
 But at a later period in the history of evolution 
 the isolated cells gather themselves together into 
 communities, and act like citizens who wish to 
 form a state. Groups of simple cells remain to- 
 gether and begin to perform different offices. 
 Some take to one occupation, some to another, 
 and they all work together for the good of the 
 whole. One set of cells devotes itself to the 
 absorption of food ; others form themselves into 
 protecting organs for the little community ; some 
 become muscle-cells, others bone-cells, others blood- 
 cells, others nerve-cells. By this division of labour 
 it becomes possible for the whole state to accom- 
 plish undertakings which would have been im- 
 possible for the single individual. In short, 
 various classes or castes arise in the cell-state, 
 following diverse occupations, and yet working 
 together for a common purpose. In proportion 
 as the division of labour progresses, the many- 
 celled organism or specialised-cell community be- 
 comes more perfect or civilised. But the vital 
 phenomena of the most perfect organism depend 
 entirely on the activities of the cellular albuminous 
 corpuscles." According to Haeckel, then, every 
 cell in every organism gives distinct evidence of 
 purpose. 
 
THE REV. PROF. A. W. MOMEPJE, D.SC, LL.D. Qtl 
 
 But it may be urged that when scientific men 
 speak in this way, it is because of the poverty of 
 lansruao-e, or throuc^h an occasional aberration of 
 intellect, which leads them for the moment to 
 adopt popular and erroneous views. It may be 
 said that the conception of purpose is unscientific, 
 and should be got rid of altogether. But I reply, 
 the conception is not unscientific. The supposi- 
 tion that Nature means something by what she 
 does has not unfrequently led to important scien- 
 tific discoveries. It was in this way that Harvey 
 found out the fact of the circulation of the blood. 
 He took notice of the valves in the veins in many 
 parts of the body, so placed as to give free passage 
 to the blood towards the heart, but opposing its 
 passage in the contrary direction. Thim he be- 
 thought himself, to use his own words, "that 
 such a provident cause as Nature had not placed 
 so many valves without a design ; and the design 
 which seemed most probable was, that the blood, 
 instead of being sent by these veins to the limbs, 
 should go first through the arteries, and return 
 through other veins whose valves did not oppose 
 its course." Thus, apart from the supposition of 
 purpose, the greatest discovery in physiological 
 science mic^ht never have been made. Now, when 
 the theory of evolution was less firmly established 
 
68 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 than at present, it was constantly urged in favour 
 of it that, wiiether true or not, it was a good work- 
 ing hypothesis, and therefore scientifically valid. 
 The supposition of purpose in Nature, though it 
 has not received, seems to me to deserve at least 
 as much respect. 
 
 At any rate, if the world be not due to pur- 
 pose, it must be the result of chance. It is often 
 asserted, I know, that it is due to neither, but is 
 the outcome of law. But this is nonsense. A law 
 of Nafiire explains nothing, for it is merely a sum- 
 mary of the facts to be explained — it is merely a 
 statement of the way in which things happen. The 
 law of gravitation is the fact that all material bodies 
 attract one another, with a force varyii^g directly 
 with their mass, and inversely with the square of 
 their distance. Now the fact that bodies attract 
 one another in this way cannot be explained by 
 the law ; for the fact is the law, and the law is 
 ihe fact. To say that the gravitation of matter is 
 accounted for by the law of gravitation is merely 
 to say that matter gravitates because it gravitates. 
 And so of the other laws of Nature ; which, taken 
 together, are the expression, in a set of convenient 
 formulae, of all the facts of our experience. The 
 laws of Nature are the facts of Nature summarised. 
 To say, then, that Nature is explained by law, is 
 
THE EEV. PROF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. G9 
 
 to say tliat the facts are explained by tliemselves. 
 The question remains, Why are the fiicts what they 
 are ? And to this question we can only answer — 
 thoudi the alternative is seldom recoo-nised — either 
 through purpose or by chance. 
 
 In favour of the latter hypothesis it may be urged 
 that the appearances of purpose in Nature have 
 possibly been produced by chance. Arrangements 
 which look intentional may occasionally be purely 
 accidental. Imagine some one set to the task of 
 drawing letters of the alphabet out of an infinite 
 bag, into which they had been originally cast pell- 
 mell. Every now and then he would get consecu- 
 tive letters that would spell an intelligible word. 
 On rare occasions he might draw out an intelligible 
 sentence or paragraph. And it is often asserted 
 that, given eternity to work in, along with an in- 
 finite number of nonsensical drawings, he might 
 educe the poems of Homer or Shakespeare, or any 
 other writer you like to name. Similarly, it is said 
 our world may have been evolved by the accidental 
 combination of atoms. In their haphazard collision 
 they had produced, in past time and in far-ofi" space, 
 worlds which bore no sign of purpose, worlds where 
 everything was irrational, monstrous, useless, and 
 absurd. Nature does not know, and never did 
 know, what she is about ; neither does she care. 
 
70 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 She has never had the faintest conception of what 
 Avould, or would not, turn up. Everything might 
 just as likely have been something else. When 
 life first appeared it was a pure accident, lucky 
 or unlucky, as we choose to regard it. The atoms 
 once upon a time chanced to come together in such 
 fashion that protoplasm was the result. The par- 
 ticles of protoplasm kept on subdividing, changing, 
 and combining, during which process some living 
 creatures became possessed of a mouth, while others 
 obtained an eye or an ear, and so on. By a con- 
 tinuance of good luck, animals in course of time be- 
 came more and more richly endowed. They came 
 into possession of a variety of organs which, as it 
 turned out, were capable of being usefully employed, 
 till at last, after a splendid series of accidents, man 
 himself appeared upon the scene. 
 
 But it is enough to make one shudder, to think 
 of the issues depending upon this thoughtless play 
 of atoms. If the figures in their fantastic dance 
 had been but slightly altered, we might have had 
 neither hands nor feet ; our feet might have been 
 where our hands now are, and vice versd; or we 
 might have had hands and feet stuck about all over 
 us. Our eyes might have been so placed that we 
 could never see anything but the sky, except by 
 standing upside down. Our ears might have been 
 
THE REV. PROF. A. W. MOM ERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 71 
 
 responsive to the noises in Siiius, but incapable of 
 catching any nearer sounds. Our heads might have 
 been placed under our arms, or behind our backs, 
 or not placed upon us at all. Similarly, it is by 
 the merest good luck that there is any measure of 
 adaptation between ourselves and the world in 
 which we find ourselves. There might have been 
 no correspondence between organism and environ- 
 ment. There might have been environment and 
 no organism ; or contrariwise, objects which looked 
 like organisms, and no surroundings to which they 
 could adapt themselves. It is pure accident that 
 there is any land for us to live upon, any water for 
 us to drink, any food for us to eat, any air for us to 
 breathe. There might have been only men in 
 the w^orld. There might have been only women. 
 There might have been no human beings of any 
 kind ; the monkey or the tadpole might, to the 
 end of the chapter, have been the lord of creation. 
 Or the chapter of life might never have been 
 written at all ; the cosmos might never have 
 emerged out of chaos ; the atoms might have 
 been dashing about, up to the present time, in 
 uninterrupted confusion. 
 
 According to the chance theory, then, our world 
 is only one out of an infinite number of possible 
 atomic arrangements, all of which might have been 
 
72 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 
 
 considered equally probable beforehand. Chance, 
 it is said, may just as easily have produced pur- 
 poseful, as purposeless, appearances. Something 
 was bound to come of the play of atoms ; why 
 not the particular world in which we find our- 
 selves. 
 
 Why not ? I will tell you why not. Those who 
 ask the question forget that, so far as our experi- 
 ence goes, it is only ivithin narrow limits that 
 seemingly purposeful arrangements are produced 
 by chance. And therefore, as the signs of pur- 
 pose increase, the presumption in favour of their 
 accidental origin diminishes. It is conceivable 
 that words and sentences might, in course of 
 time, be drawn accidentally out of a bag of letters. 
 And if any one goes so far as to say that the poems 
 of Homer were produced in this fashion, I am unable 
 to prove that they were not. Still I submit that 
 his theory is unsupported by experience. Suppos- 
 ing it conceivable that a poem might be shaken out 
 of a bag, I have never seen or heard of one 
 composed in this fashion. And if the presump- 
 tion against the accidental origin of a purpose- 
 ful arrangement of letters, such as we have in 
 Homer, be great, the presumption against such 
 an origin for the whole of a country's literature 
 is, of course, much greater still. What, then, 
 
THE EEV. PROF. A. W. MOMERIE, D.SC, LL.D. 73 
 
 must be tlie presumption against the chance origin 
 of the purposeful arrangement of those material 
 atoms of which the universe is composed ? In a 
 national literature we have myriads of combina- 
 tions which seem to tell of design; but all the 
 literature of the whole world is but a single item, 
 a tiny detail, an infinitesimal fraction, in a uni- 
 verse which gives us the indelible impression of 
 being riddled through and through with purpose. 
 Let every human being now alive upon the earth 
 spend the rest of his days and nights in writing 
 down arithmetical figures ; let the enormous num- 
 bers which these figures would represent — each 
 number forming a library in itself — be all added 
 together; let this result be squared, cubed, multi- 
 plied by itself ten thousand times ; and the final 
 product would still iiiU infinitely short of ex- 
 pressing the probabilities against the world having 
 been evolved by chance. Whoever believes in its 
 accidental origin must have a singularly consti- 
 tuted mind. In comparison with such a supposi- 
 tion, the most extravagant vagaries of a theological 
 fanatic, the wildest imaginings of a raving lunatic, 
 are calm and sober sense. 
 
IV. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN DOC- 
 TRINE OF THE INCARNATION, 
 
 By the Eev. a. F. MUIR, M.A. 
 
 TF at first sight these two conceptions, when 
 placed side by side, might appear mutually 
 exclusive, this impression will be dissipated by a 
 more thorough study of their distinctive natures 
 and relations. 
 
 "Evolution," which has been defined as the 
 gradual increase of correspondence between an 
 organ and that which environs it, may be inter- 
 preted in two senses : it may be understood as an 
 operation entirely within Nature, or as involving 
 at the same time the sphere of Nature and the 
 presence and co-operation of supernatural factors. 
 
 A person is not to be pronounced an opponent 
 of Evolution who holds the latter view ; as witness 
 Alfred Eussell Wallace, the naturalist who all but 
 contests the palm with Darwin in regard to the 
 discovery of this principle as a key to the pheno- 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIK, M.A. 75 
 
 mena of the universe, Dana/ Lotze,^ Drummond/ 
 and many other Avell-known authorities. 
 
 Without binding myself to the acceptance of 
 either of these views as ultimate or exhaustive 
 statements of the mysterious process, I would 
 venture to affirm that in my opinion the Christian 
 doctrine of the Incarnation is, at least in many 
 of its aspects, consistent with the doctrine of 
 Evolution. Nay more, that without such a con- 
 ception as that of '' God manifest in the flesh," 
 the real grandeur and vastness of the process of 
 Evolution is not recognised. 
 
 For the illustration and proof of this position let 
 us examiue in the first place the Christian concep- 
 tion of the Incarnation. For present purposes it 
 may be sufficient to describe the generally received 
 conception of the Incarnation as represented by a 
 being of two-fold nature — Divine and human — so 
 united as to constitute one personality, both ele- 
 ments being at the same time equally real and 
 lasting. That this conception, more or less frag- 
 mentarily, more or less indirectly, recurs again and 
 again in the Old Testament Scriptures is well known 
 to the most general reader. 
 
 And side by side with this series there appears 
 
 1 "Ameiiccan Journal of Science and Arts," Oct. 1876, p. 251^ 
 "Geology," 603-4. '^ " Mikrokosmus," vol. I., bk. 3. chap. i. 
 
 3 " Natural Law in the Spiritual World." 
 
76 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 a series of superhuman manifestations under the 
 character of the Angel of the Covenant, or the 
 Angel of the Lord. Then in the course of the 
 spiritual development of the Jewish people and 
 intimately associated with it are certain concep- 
 tions of a Coming One in whom the hopes of the 
 chosen people were centred, that may be described 
 as Messianic. It matters little whether these con- 
 ceptions be considered as wholly inspired, or as 
 partly the result of human thought and experience, 
 partly the result of superhuman communications, 
 the case is indeed rather strengthened than other- 
 wise by assuming a mixed origin for them. We 
 should wholly fail to grasp the central influence 
 of Jewish spiritual life if we supposed it to be an 
 abstract principle of righteousness — it is ever an 
 anticipation of a personal being in whom this 
 righteousness w^as to be manifested and fulfilled ; 
 and in order to this he was conceived of as in- 
 vested with superhuman attributes, as combining 
 in his own nature qualities and properties incom- 
 patible wdth one another, if experience were alone 
 to be a guide. Those, indeed, who handed on the 
 tradition spoke of it as a revelation. And as if 
 their consciousness of its imminent fulfilment be- 
 came more intense their intimations of it grew in 
 distinctness as it approached. 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 77 
 
 Now the moral and religious influence of this 
 ideal development was of the utmost importance. 
 In conjunction with the experience of universal 
 inability amongst the people to fulfil the Law, it 
 kept the true Israel amidst all the vicissitudes of 
 history as a godly seed and succession until "the 
 fulness of time ivlien God sent forth His Son, 
 made of a ivoman, made under the laiv, to redeem 
 them that were under the lawJ' A nobler ideal of 
 manhood, a more exalted standard of conduct, and 
 the sense of a more universal brotherhood amongst 
 men, gradually evolved themselves from the ruder 
 elements of morality and religion which had formed 
 the original spiritual inheritance of the people. As 
 has been said by a distinguished Bampton lecturer 
 (Bishop Alexander), *'the whole atmosphere of Jew- 
 ish religious thought was charged with mystical 
 elements ; " and these reacted upon the national 
 and individual life in such a manner as to en- 
 courage the production of the very types of man- 
 hood in which they would be realised. 
 
 It must be confessed that according to the 
 indications we have of its existence in Hebrew 
 thought this conception cannot be explained as 
 a result of development from ordinary natural 
 experience. On the one hand it arose in the con- 
 sciousness of a people who held even to fanaticism 
 
78 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 tlie tenets of an absolute monotheism ; and on the 
 Other it possesses such a unique individuality of its 
 own, that apart from the historic demonstration 
 which has been adduced by more than one scholar 
 of the isolation of the Jewish nation from inter- 
 course with the far East — the recognised cradle of 
 such mystic ideas — for centuries before the Advent, 
 all attempts to trace it to Hindoo or Greek 
 originals have signally failed. The Hellenic in- 
 carnation is rather a metamorphism, as the Greeks 
 thought of the gods not as purely spiritual beings, 
 but as exaggerated human beings, with all the 
 faults and failings of everyday human creatures ; 
 and the Brahmanic incarnation is an assumption 
 in which the human or animal manifestation is but 
 an evanescent and unreal mask for a demiurmc or 
 
 CD 
 
 transcendent world -force. In examples of neither 
 of them do we discern a real qualitative duality of 
 nature represented in one personality, as in the 
 case of the Messianic idea. 
 
 So far, therefore, we find that whereas the idea 
 itself refuses to be resolved into purely natural 
 elements, or to be explained as the product of 
 purely natural factors, it acted as an inspiring and 
 directive impulse in the higher spiritual develop- 
 ment of the Jewish nation. 
 
 Let us in the next place examine the historic 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, MA. 79 
 
 realisation of this idea. Of the actual existence of 
 such a person as Jesus Christ there is happily, as 
 John Stuart Mill admits, not the shadow of a 
 doubt. The New Testament evidence upon this 
 point is corroborated to such an extent by non- 
 Christian authorities that it may be accepted as for 
 all practical purposes certain and conclusive. And 
 that the birth and career of Jesus were, in the 
 opinion of a multitude of contemporaries, asso- 
 ciated with supernatural phenomeua, is almost 
 equally demonstrable. I am, of course, quite aware 
 that notable attempts have been made from time 
 to time, and especially in our own age, to explain 
 these phenomena as mythological accretions ; and 
 the Eev. C. Voysey and others have maintained 
 that science and the Bible together are destined, 
 by their mutual contradiction, to dethrone Jesus ; 
 *' for science is ever extending, and the Bible is ever 
 contradicting it." But from the very nature of our 
 present investigation, the discussion as to the 
 actuality of the supernatural elements alleged to 
 have existed in the personality and work of Jesus 
 lies beyond its purview. What is now sought to 
 be ascertained, is not whether such things really 
 existed, but whether, assuming for the time being 
 that they did exist, they accord with a tenable 
 theory of Evolution in the nature and ideas of the 
 
80 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 race. Should it appear that there is no funda- 
 mental contradiction between the assumption of a 
 Divine Incarnation having taken place in such a 
 person aud at such a time, and the doctrine of the 
 evolutionary progress of mankind, then evidence 
 will have been obtained strongly confirming the 
 truth of those pretensions which were put forth on 
 behalf of our Lord, and by Himself. 
 
 Accepting then, for the time being, the general 
 trustworthiness of the New Testament statements 
 as to the Incarnation, we have to ask, " To what 
 extent can they be reconciled with a reasonable 
 theory of Evolution ? " 
 
 It is of cardinal importance that the prophetic 
 character of the Old Testament announcements of 
 the Messiah should be noted. They were, from the 
 very circumstances amidst which they originated, 
 anticipations of the fact of the Incarnation leading 
 up to it, but in no instance springing from it. And 
 this is the more apparent when we see how the fact 
 itself, whilst according with these anticipations, was 
 immensely beyond them. Yet in their peculiar re- 
 ference to circumstantial incidents in the actual 
 earthly life of Christ they stand alone in history. 
 "The strength of prophecy lies in its chain of 
 references to Christ, from the first mention of the 
 ' seed of the woman ' to the virgin-born Immanuel ; 
 
THE EEV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 81 
 
 from the Sufferer, whose heel is bruised in terms of 
 the earliest promise, to the *Man of Sorrows' in 
 the fifty-third of Isaiah; and from the peaceful 
 Lawgiver of a yet uncrowned tribe to the heir of 
 David, who enters the long established seat of rule 
 as a king." ^ 
 
 The remarkable correspondence of these predic- 
 tions with their fulfilments is at Jeast suo^orestive of 
 the entire series being dependent upon one common 
 principle ; and that this anticipative communion in 
 the central fact of the Incarnation was a moral 
 inspiration and support, not only to the Jewish 
 saints, but to the holy of other nations throughout 
 the world and the ages is, apart from the direct 
 statements of Scriptures to that effect, witnessed to 
 by the confessions of the great religious leaders and 
 thinkers themselves. And that that religion which 
 was bound up with the clearest intimations of the 
 Coming One stands forth to the present day (always 
 excepting its grander sequel) peerless amidst the 
 greater religions of the world, seems to indicate in 
 a most conclusive way that the moral advance and 
 achievement of the past were inseparable from the 
 realisation of the advent of Messiah. 
 
 But look at the several elements distinguishable 
 in the New Testament representation of the per- 
 
 1 Principal Cairns, D.D., Lectures. 
 
82 EVOLUTION AXD THE IXCARNATIOX. 
 
 sonality of Jesus, and tlie principle of development 
 is still further illustrated. 
 
 Tlie human nature of our Lord is there in reo-ard 
 to its origin essentially connected with the Past. 
 It is real, even as His Divine nature is, and through 
 His mother from whom it was derived He is, in 
 every respect save sinfulness, subject to the laws 
 of heredity. He shares the heritage of physical 
 infirmity, of mental predisposition, and ethnic 
 peculiarity. The associations historical, moral, and 
 spiritual to which he looks back are those of the 
 Jews. As a man the nature and consciousness of 
 Jesus were differentiated from those of preceding 
 ages, whether of his own or of other races, nationali- 
 ties, and creeds, just as might be looked for in the 
 average Jew of His day. There are traces of the 
 influence of His domestic circumstances, His early 
 occupation, and His physical and geographical en- 
 vironment observable in Him even to the close of 
 His career. Had His appearance taken place amidst 
 other than the historical, geographical, and spiritual 
 conditions in which it did take place, the whole 
 conception of His personality would have to be 
 lecast. In the appearance or customary life of 
 Jtsus there was little to distinguish Him from those 
 amongst whom He lived. At no period were His 
 foilow-countrymen at a loss to identify Him as one 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIE, M.A. 83 
 
 of tliemselves :-''Is not this Joseph the carpenter's 
 son ? " Save for an exquisitely sensitive tempera- 
 ment, an inward growth, physical, mental, and 
 spiritual, and an abnormally widening consciousness. 
 He takes His place in the ranks of the people from 
 whom He sprung. 
 
 It was chiefly ns a moral teacher that He began 
 to be distinguished from others. It was evident 
 that the central principle of conduct according to 
 which He Himself acted, and according to which 
 He taught His disciples to act, w^as not the con- 
 ventional one of His time. His teaching with 
 regard to the requirements of the Law, the°obliga- 
 tions of Fasting, and of the Sabbath, and the dura- 
 tion of Temple arrangements and institutions, was 
 peculiar to Himself, and yet it cannot be under- 
 stood rightly save as an evolution of Judaism 
 determined by a spiritual and more universal prin- 
 ciple. The sharp opposition to rabbinic teaching 
 and orthodox religion into which He is thus thrown"^ 
 w^hilst it evidently proceeds upon a deeper ground 
 of moral motive and conception than had as yet 
 obtained amongst men, is not to be interpreted as 
 an ignoring or overthrowing of the moral inherit- 
 ance of the Jews. The Law of Moses is loyally 
 accepted by him as a general schema of the moral 
 and religious life : all that He claims as a rio-ht for 
 
84 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 Himself and His followers is that of more spiritually 
 and vitally interpreting it. His view of moral 
 obligations is an advance upon the Law of Moses, 
 but demonstrably in the line of it. And behind 
 the teaching — its background, indeed, and source 
 — vras that wonderful life in which were displayed 
 the loftiest principles of morality. In its history 
 there is visible an evolution alike of the spiritual 
 nature and of the realised groundwork of moral 
 action. Its tragic outcome on the cross, exhibiting 
 as it did an absolute sacrifice of self, is seen to be 
 the necessary outcome of such a personal union of 
 the Divine and the human amidst the environment 
 by which it was surrounded. 
 
 From a candid examination, then, of the extant 
 evidence we may infer that in this man the con- 
 ditions and requirements of a perfect human life on 
 the moral side were absolutely fulfilled. It was not 
 only that judged by the moral standard of the Jews 
 He was *' without sin," — there was a positive afflu- 
 ence of righteousness and love in Him, or, as the 
 greatest of the Evangelists phrases it, " he was full 
 of grace and truth," and '' of his fulness we all 
 received, and grace for grace." He stands forth 
 from the common multitude of men as a unique 
 Form, solitary, unparalleled, unapproachable. 
 *'We have before us in the prophets," says Dr. 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIC, M.A. 85 
 
 Abraham Geiger, "a. succession of noble per- 
 sonages, each marked by an individuality of his 
 own, yet all characterised by a calm grandeur, 
 an unaffected elevation, a fervour and withal 
 thoughtfulness, a boldness and at the same 
 time humble submission, which overawes us, and 
 makes us recognise in them the breathing and 
 influence of a higher spirit. Whence came this ? 
 We arrive here at the deep ground of the human 
 soul, beyond which we cannot go ; at an original 
 faculty, which works creatively out of its own self 
 without its being borne by an outward impulse." ^ 
 In patriarch, psalmist, and seer Israel had shone 
 forth amidst the nations of antiquity with an un- 
 challenged spiritual distinction. A David and a 
 Solomon had shed an undecaying lustre upon her 
 throne. And far back on the very threshold of 
 her true history as a nation there rises still a ma- 
 jestic Figure, the Lawgiver not alone for her but 
 for all the peoples of earth and time. Yet here 
 is a King, a Prophet, a Lawgiver, who outshines 
 them all. In Abraham, Moses, Samuel ; in David 
 and Solomon; in the saints and seers of the old 
 economy we discern a real historic advance towards 
 a higher type of manhood and standard of morality. 
 But as we contemplate them more closely their one- 
 
 ^ Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte, 
 
86 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 sidedness and comparative imperfection— nav, their 
 faults of character and positive acts of sin— preclude 
 our accepting them as exponents of universal and 
 ultimate righteousness. With the advent of Jesus 
 they fall into the background as shadows, proto- 
 types, sketches of " Him who was to come." It is 
 when w^e view them in their relation to Him, and 
 only then, that we discover their comparative 
 values as links in the chain of moral evolution. 
 He places them m serie, and their relation to Him 
 determines their true position for all time. 
 
 But it is just because of this full and flawless 
 symmetry of character, this sublime moral eleva- 
 tion, till then unattained, and never since ap- 
 proached, that the Evolutionist is at a loss in his 
 endeavour to account for Jesus from the operation 
 of merely earthly and human elements in organi- 
 sation and environment. That very measureless 
 pleroma of the Spirit of God with which He is 
 credited, whilst linking Him with the great spiritual 
 geniuses of the past, yet sets Him in a place apart. 
 As we ponder the problem of this life, the convic- 
 tion frrows within us that " He who is to be the 
 Head of a new race, which is to be at once Diviue 
 and human — the realisation, that is to say, of its 
 primitive type — cannot be simply one of the links 
 of the lono: chain of natural generations, all tainted 
 
THE r.EV. A. F. MUIPv, M.A. 87 
 
 with tlie evil which has, as it were, become iucou- 
 poratecl in a fallen race." ^ y 
 
 But, it may be asked, Does not this hypothesis of 
 a Divine-human personality in Jesus of itself ex- 
 clude all possibility of a true evolution ? At the / 
 outset of our discussion it was claimed that the 
 evolution of the race w^as not negatived by sup- 
 posing an intermixture of Divine with earthly 
 elements in the process. That qualification of 
 the theory as applied to the human race admits 
 of very cogent defence. To begin with, it seems 
 imperative that the presence — the immanence, 
 rather — of intelligence should be assumed in the 
 oricfinal atoms constitutiuor the matter of which 
 the chano^ins: forms of Evolution are built up. 
 It is asking too much of a reasonable mind that 
 it should credit the material atom, or its environ- 
 ment, or both, with the *' promise and the 
 potency" of the myriad transmutations and adap- 
 tations through which it passes in its wondrous 
 history. Professor Tyndall may tell us if he likes 
 that "the formation of a crystal, a plant, or an 
 animal, is in their (the Evolutionists') eyes a purely 
 mechanical problem, which differs from the pro- 
 blems of ordinary mechanics in the smallness of 
 the masses and the complexity of the processes 
 
 1 De Pressense. "Jesus Christ ; His Time, Life, and Work." 
 
88 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 involved " — that mind is a " property of matter," 
 and consciousness a something which '' exhibits no 
 solution of continuity;" and others even more 
 daring, if less strictly scientific, may declare that 
 ''at the present moment all our philosophy, all 
 our poetry, all our science, and all our art — Plato, 
 Shakespeare, Newton, and Eaphael — are potential 
 in the fires of the sun." But such a re-hash of 
 Lucretianism is scarcely to the taste of an age 
 like our own so deeply saturated in spiritual ideas. 
 The more the question is studied, the more inevit- 
 able is the judgment that in the primordial atom 
 we have a highly elaborate product of mind. And 
 the mind capable of such a creation must be pro- 
 nounced no less than infinite. Nor does the hypo- 
 thesis of a construction and impulse merely initial 
 meet with acceptance as evolutionary science ad- 
 vances. The consensus of opinion increasingly 
 iavours the assumption of an immanent principle 
 or force determining the process of evolution in 
 all its stages and moments. Still more incredible 
 is it that the spiritual nature of man should emerge 
 from the interaction of merely physical elements 
 with a physical environment. Turn which way we 
 may, the inference confronts us that such a nature 
 can spring only "from above." If we add to this 
 the fact that the consciousness of the race is instinct 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 89 
 
 with elements wliich persistently assert for them- 
 selves a Divine origin, the case seems all but made 
 out for an immediate influence of the Supreme 
 Spirit being exerted in the development of the 
 spiritual nature of man. Man has been described 
 by a great religious writer as " a being capable of 
 God." That is but another way of saying that in 
 Him we live, and move, and have our beiug. He 
 is our environment, the true "place of spirits," and 
 it is by the interaction of our spiritual natures with 
 His that we advance in holiness, power, aod wisdom. 
 In the plane of Nature in no case are we presented 
 with the perfect type toward which any species of 
 plants or animals approximates ; but in the plane 
 of human nature such a type is realised and held 
 forth in Jesus Christ. May there not be a sufficient 
 reason for this in the reflective nature of the human 
 consciousness and in the relation of man to the 
 physical world on the one hand, and to God, in 
 whose image he was made, on the other ? That 
 the Incarnation may have been due to the uni- 
 versal presence of sin in the race, by which a 
 restoratio7i, and not a mere advance upon spiritual 
 excellence, was necessitated, is a hypothesis at least 
 worthy of provisional acceptance until some better 
 be discovered. That in Christ we have " the cul- 
 mination of the creation," *' under the law of the 
 
90 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 ascent of life, and the individualisation of liiglier 
 and higher forms of spiritual existence," ^ is true, 
 but it is not the whole truth. The presentation of 
 a perfect human character in such a conjunction 
 has in it a peculiar force, a generative virtue, by 
 which the god-consciousness is centralised in human 
 nature, and becomes the germ of a higher spiritual 
 development than would be possible to it under 
 the less perfect economy which preceded it. Under 
 no other conditions could the law of self-sacrifice 
 be perfectly exemplified, or operate so powerfully 
 upon the human conscience. So John, the greatest 
 of the earth-born, is less than " the lesser in the 
 kingdom of heaven." 
 
 That beings so diverse in constitution as Christ 
 and Christians should be incapable of being in- 
 cluded in the same evolutionary series has not 
 been demonstrated by those who have most strenu- 
 ously objected to such a classification. To myself 
 it appears no less conceivable and reasonable that 
 they should, than that a real evolution should be 
 taking place, as so many believe, in the universe at 
 large,' although the Infinite Himself is predicated 
 as its start-point, goal, and determining force. 
 Through the Incarnation a: vast extension of scale 
 in the evolution of the spiritual life has been 
 
 1 J. Cook, D.D. ".Boston Lectures." 
 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 91 
 
 effected. It has called into existence a new species 
 of spiritual consciousness, superior to that previ- 
 ously existing, and yet inferior to itself in an 
 immeasurable degree. That the progressive possi- 
 bilities of the Christian consciousness in the in- 
 dividual have been exhausted is far from probable ; 
 but in any case there is a future opened up by the 
 " indwelling Christ " to the fellowship of the re- 
 deemed, in which it is to attain '" unto a full-grown 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ;" and the Church is called "the fulness 
 of Him that filleth all in all." If, then, the incar- 
 nate Christ as an individual member of the series 
 which He crowns represents a personality which is, 
 from the nature of things, unrealisable by the other 
 members, yet is He a necessary condition of the 
 realisation on their part of a new, and hitherto un- 
 known, species of god-consciousness and the spiritual 
 life involved in it. " In the heart of our holy reli- 
 gion," says an acute thinker, " God and man meet 
 in the central glory of Christ's person ; " and in the 
 surrounding sphere of inspiration God and man still 
 meet, though in a more deeply shaded glory in the 
 Christianity revealed to us by the "holy men of 
 old, who spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost." The union of the Divine Son with His 
 Father in so far as it was hypostatic or personal 
 
92 EVOLUTION AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 is an Id communicable property, but in so far as 
 it was moral it is extended to all who believe : 
 *' The glory which Thou hast given Me I have 
 given unto them ; that they may be one, even 
 as we are one ; I in them, and Thou in Me, that 
 they may he perfected into one.'' 
 
INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 By the Rev. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 
 
 rPHERE are some essential doctrines of the Chris- 
 tian religion which may be said to have only 
 an indirect relation to the system of thought or of 
 thino-s called by us Evolution, inasmuch as they lie 
 outside the limits of the territory over which it 
 claims exclusive possession. Such, for instance, 
 are immortality and the Divine life of Christ, 
 which, if true, depend plainly upon forces of which 
 Evolution can give and pretends to give no 
 account ; in these cases, therefore, it is enough to 
 show that they are not incompatible with Evolu- 
 tion, nor rendered less credible by it, but have a 
 place and use of their own alongside of it. But 
 with the great doctrine of Inspiration the case is 
 different. For Inspiration is the influence of spirit 
 upon spirit (the Divine upon the human) by means 
 of thouoht, and our ideas about the thinking faculty, 
 
94 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 both as to its origin, its connection with the brain, 
 its development in the history of man, are being 
 profoundly modified by modern discoveries and 
 speculations. We are therefore compelled, if we 
 choose to deal with the subject at all, to show that 
 Evolution will help us to an account of Inspiration 
 which shall be both satisfactory to reason, and also 
 meet the demands and perform the office imposed 
 upon it by religion. A subject so difficult, especi- 
 ally in the present state of knowledge, that only its 
 extreme importance could justify the attempt to 
 deal with it. 
 
 It is necessary to observe at the outset that in a 
 discussion of this kind Inspiration must be taken 
 to mean only so much as Christian theology in 
 general is agreed upon as plainly essential to the 
 Christian faith. To ascertain this, therefore, is 
 important, and Evolution helps us to do it. 
 
 The special service that Evolution has rendered 
 to the Christian revelation — a service so signal that 
 it may well be thought to outweigh the temporary 
 difficulties and passing prejudices it has raised 
 against it — has been to make it clear that the 
 course of Nature can never by itself afford man- 
 kind the materials for a vital and effective relif^ion, 
 that is, can never discover to us a God whom we 
 are constrained to love, to worship, and to trust. 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 95 
 
 A God wlio should become an olgect of faith and 
 emotion must needs make Himself known to His 
 creatures by some communication transcending the 
 ordinary course of Nature ; in other words, there 
 must be a revelation, a truth w^hich is the first 
 postulate of the Christian creed, and the proof of 
 which may fairly be thought to start the mind well 
 on in its journey towards belief. By religious In- 
 spiration, therefore, we understand the revelation 
 of Himself by God to man through the only means 
 by which information can be conveyed to beings 
 like ourselves, i.e., the influence of spirit upon 
 spirit by the agency of thought. Somehow or 
 other the Eternal Mind must reach our finite 
 understandings and inform them of that which it 
 is necessary for us to know, if we are to be religious 
 as He would have us to be. 
 
 So far probably all are agreed. But then this 
 Inspiration must carry somehow its own authority 
 with it, and it is at this point that the Christian 
 instinct, clearly ajDprehending this necessity, has 
 begun to construct theories of Inspiration, or at 
 any rate to make assertions about it, which have, 
 it must be confessed, confounded authoritativeness 
 with infallibility. If a messenger comes to me 
 from a friend, or even from a source known to 
 exist, but not hitherto know^n as having any rela- 
 
96 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 tion to myself, it is not necessary to my reception 
 of the message that I should believe the messenger 
 to be infallible, but only that he should be truthful 
 and well informed. It is of course open to any one 
 to say that in order to secure certainty God would 
 be sure to make His messenger infallible, or that, 
 as a matter of fact, He has done so, or that He has 
 promised to do so, but this clearly does not belong 
 to the essence of Inspiration, as we have just 
 defined it. 
 
 From the same desire of obtaining authoritative- 
 ness the Christian instinct has multiplied the 
 channels through which Inspiration has come to 
 man, and has always ended by claiming infallibility 
 for them. We believe, however, that in the light 
 of Evolution it will be seen that the special infor- 
 mation about God comes through the Bible only, 
 and is connected with that specific revelation of 
 which the Jews were the depositaries. At any 
 rate, the exact question with which we have to 
 occupy ourselves is this : Does Evolution explain 
 and verify the process of revelation by Inspiration 
 contained in the Bible ? Or is that process in 
 analogy with similar phenomena in Nature and 
 in history 1 Does it avail itself of the same forces, 
 operate in the same directions, tend to like results ? 
 If so, there is good reason for believing that the 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 97 
 
 same God is working in Nature and in revelation, 
 in law and in grace. 
 
 The theory of the growth of the human intelli- 
 gence which Evolution proposes to us may be 
 summed up briefly somewhat as follows. At a 
 certain epoch there arose beings who were so 
 far different from, and raised above, the animals 
 that they were conscious of their own existence, 
 that is, of themselves as related to external objects, 
 which it is the fashion now to call our environment. 
 From this germ has sprung the human mind, with 
 all its various faculties, characteristics, and speci- 
 alities. Variations would arise in the one mind 
 common to all individuals, partly from causes im- 
 possible to trace, but chiefly from the union of two 
 different minds in the parentage of a third ; these 
 variations being found useful for the survival and 
 success, the power and happiness of their possessors, 
 would be preserved, and would be handed down as 
 dispositions that differentiated and modified not 
 merely the texture of the mind itself, but also the 
 form and constitution of the brain, together with 
 all the intellectual apparatus connected with it. 
 Added to this an ever-changing environment would 
 exercise an even more potent influence in the direc- 
 tion of constituting different classes of minds, or 
 different faculties within the same mind, adapting 
 
 G 
 
98 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 it to successful correlation with external objects 
 in the shape, e.g., of art, or thought, or duty, or 
 science. And thus would arise the national or race 
 mind by the interaction of similarly developed 
 minds upon each other in a given locality, and by 
 the pressure of the same environment upon one 
 group of minds collected together in a society. In 
 such cases outward objects and events would excite 
 corresponding and appropriate thoughts in minds 
 specially developed to entertain and understand 
 them by means of the various faculties which 
 Evolution has brought into existence. 
 
 Hence comes the religious faculty as the correla- 
 tion of the self-conscious mind with that part of its 
 environment which consists in the presentation of 
 the fact of the Unknowable to reason and experi- 
 ence. Attribute the actual origin of religious senti- 
 ments to what you will, let the ghost, the fetish, 
 the sun, the dream, play whatever part they can in 
 the development of religious beliefs, it remains true 
 that it is only because man does not know whence 
 he came and whither he goes, and yet by virtue of 
 his self-consciousness cannot but speculate upon 
 unknown possibilities, that he becomes and remains 
 a relif^ious beino;. The fact of the Unknowable as 
 related to himself and forming the most impressive 
 and tremendous feature in his environment inspires 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 99 
 
 religious thoughts as surely as other facts of his en- 
 vironment have gone to make him an artistic or 
 philosophic genius. We may confidently leave to 
 reason to trace the exact steps whereby religion 
 came to be what it is, provided only that reason 
 does not omit the most important factor in the 
 case, and does not confound the origin of certain 
 forms of belief with the believing faculty itself, 
 which belonged to man from the moment he 
 knew that he existed, and knew nothing else 
 besides. 
 
 This brii]gs us to the fact, which without ex- 
 aggeration may be called the greatest in history, 
 that the Jewish nation is the one pre-eminently 
 religious nation of the world, that among the Jews 
 religion reached its highest type, to the exclusion 
 or diminishing of other national characteristics, 
 that they are, in short, the one signal illustration 
 and embodiment of the religious faculty. In the 
 process of mental differentiation, in the origin of 
 new classes or types, this is what happened to 
 them, this is their portion in the field of human 
 activity. If then, in a purely scientific spirit we 
 analyse this phenomenon, may we hope to come 
 to some conclusion as to the nature of that In- 
 spiration upon which at this moment depends the 
 religious future of mankind ? 
 
100 INSPIHATION AND EVOLUTION". 
 
 (i.) Among the Jews God was tlie transcendent 
 feature in their mental environment, the one object 
 that was always being presented to the national 
 and individual consciousness. His existence, rule, 
 operation, will, were never absent from their 
 thoughts as a determining influence. He was 
 about their path and about their bed and spied 
 out all their ways. That which the highest 
 thought in other nations came to regard as the 
 Unknowable, the highest thought among the 
 Jews habitually regarded as the best known fact 
 in the whole world. Hence came a ceaseless flow 
 of thouo-ht and feelino^, of rules and ordinances, 
 filling their minds with the power and enthusiasm 
 of religious inspiration ; they lived and had their 
 being in God as the one external reality by which 
 they were conditioned or " environed." 
 
 (2.) The outward reality was correlated Avith an 
 inwardly prepared disposition or faculty. Without 
 dwelling on the marked physical or mental type 
 which has perpetuated itself through all their event- 
 ful history, w^e merely remind ourselves that the 
 belief that God had called them to be His peculiar 
 people was the thought dominating the Jewish 
 mind from generation to generation, and w^as trans- 
 mitted at once by inheritance and education from 
 parent to child. And it must further be observed 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 101 
 
 that it was not their belief in the past or j^resent 
 dealings of God with them, but in their hopes for 
 His future dealings that constituted the most 
 decisive element in the national reliorion. Tiie 
 
 o 
 
 moment any nation tries to live upon its past ifc 
 begins to die, the good genius of Evolution deserts 
 it for those who have the spirit of progress and the 
 energy of survival Thus, then, the consciousness 
 of God struck upon their minds in quite a different 
 way from that in which religious ideas impress 
 other people, and produced all that was special in 
 their teaching and conduct, all that differentiates 
 them from the rest of mankind in respect to reli- 
 gion. As an illustration of what is meant it may 
 be sufficient to indicate the contrast between the 
 Jew on the shores of the Red Sea, and the Greek 
 in the Bay of Salamis. 
 
 (3.) The actual process by which there came into 
 existence an environment that afforded materials 
 for religious thought, and religiously disposed 
 minds capable of thinking about them, is not at 
 all difficult to discern. As to the first, their 
 history was so arranged as to convey an over- 
 whelming impression that God was dealing with 
 them. By the call of Abraham, but far more by 
 the deliverance from Egypt, the national mind 
 received a definite impression which it never shook 
 
102 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 off and which enabled it to see the hand of God in 
 everything that happened, till the mission of Christ 
 crowned their belief with certainty. As to the 
 second, we desire to lay special stress upon the fact 
 that all the Jewish religious heroes and teachers 
 believed themselves called by a definite summons 
 at a definite moment to do the will and proclaim 
 the mind of God. Tliis is true of the long list that 
 beo"ins with Abraham and ends with St. Paul and 
 inchides Jesus Christ Himself, who began His minis- 
 try after His baptism and temptation with the words 
 " The spirit of the Lord is upon Me." From this 
 moment they had no doubt but what they were in 
 direct communication with God, commissioned to 
 do or proclaim His will, able to record accurately 
 and to think rightly about all the circumstances in 
 Nature or in history which came to them from 
 Him, and which in their minds displayed His glory, 
 announced His judgments, or proclaimed His 
 tender mercies. The outcome of this dwelling 
 upon events believed to be due to the interposi- 
 tion of God by men who believed themselves 
 called to make known His will is the Old and 
 New Testament, the history of Israel and the 
 rise of Christianity. 
 
 (4.) From this it is evident that the authorita- 
 tiveness of Scriptural inspiration depends entirely 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 103 
 
 upon the question whether the Christian scheme 
 taken as a whole is from God or w^hether it is one 
 lon^ error of well-meaninsf but missruided men. If 
 in order to give His creatures a revelation of Him- 
 self, God did indeed enter into special relations 
 with the people of Israel, and if He did indeed call 
 their great men to the special task of explaining 
 the meaning of His acts and His government, then 
 in the results of their thoughts and conduct we 
 have all the knowledge that the heart of man 
 desires to enable him to love, serve, and worship 
 God. Let us draw out this important point a 
 little in detail in connection with the central 
 truth of Christianity, the life of Christ and its 
 inspiring effect upon the mind of, in scientific 
 language, the religious genius, and, in religious 
 language, the inspired Apostle, by whom mainly 
 its meaning has been conveyed to mankind. 
 
 The causes or conditions that determined the 
 inspiration of St. Paul may be summed up as 
 follows. First, there was the mind and character 
 in which was reflected all the deepest, purest, 
 and most essential religiousness of the Jewish 
 people — a Hebrew of the Hebrews and a Pharisee 
 of the Pharisees. Next there was the presenta- 
 tion by external agency to this consciousness of 
 the fact that the Jewish Messiah had lived, died. 
 
104 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 and risen again in the person of Jesus of Nazareth 
 whom he was persecuting. Lastly, there was the 
 ever-pressing and growing question as to what were 
 to be the relations of the Jewish Messiah to the 
 whole human race, and to the future religion of the 
 whole world. Given this correlation of outward 
 environment with inwardly prepared susceptibility 
 of character, moving among circumstances calcu- 
 lated to suggest the most difficult and yet interest- 
 ing problems, and there is not, we make bold to 
 say, any difficulty in tracing the natural course of 
 St. Paul's inspiration or in accepting it as a per- 
 fectly authoritative exposition of the relations of 
 God towards man. In proof of which we suggest 
 the following considerations. 
 
 The whole process presents a complete analogy 
 to the process by which truth has been discovered 
 in every department of thought. Thus the pre- 
 sentation of certain phenomena to the mind of, 
 say, Newton, suggests a discovery of the will of 
 God in ordering the relations of material things. 
 This is the specific task of genius, by means of 
 which truth once for all emerges, never afterwards 
 to be questioned, and itself a sure basis of further 
 discovery ; in the course of Evolution the hour has 
 struck and the man appears. What chance have 
 later minds of reading the facts more accurately or 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 105 
 
 solving that precise problem in any other way ? If 
 in that crisis of humanity St. Paul had missed the 
 true meaning of Christ's revelation, or to put it in 
 his own analogous words, if it had not pleased God 
 to reveal to him the mystery, is it possible that 
 later minds would have perceived it? Evolution 
 is, in short, one long series of emergencies, whether 
 of fact or knowledge, arising out of the varying 
 correlation of phenomena, which correlation again, 
 protesting with loud emphatic voice against the 
 idea of chance, and disdaining that of fate, points 
 to a Supreme Mind that " calleth things that be 
 not as though they were." 
 
 But to this a priori credibility that St. Paul was 
 right, and that authoritatively, in his conception 
 of the phenomena presented to him we may add 
 the a posteriori testimony that the whole growth 
 and working of his mind lies as open to us, and 
 really almost as persuasive, as a Newtonian demon- 
 stration. Given the facts as he received them, and 
 the problem he had to meet, and we can see his 
 mind drawing fresh results and arriving at new 
 truths in the most natural and convincing manner ; 
 his logic, arguments, adaptations, distinctions, 
 limitations, are just what might have been expected, 
 and betray at every step the workings of his own 
 personality. There is, of course, an entirely new 
 
106 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 and wonderful element in what tie says, but that is 
 always the case with the transcending power of 
 genius, which baffles the calculations of ordinary 
 minds, and stamps its own truthfulness and power 
 upon them. And genius is perhaps itself the 
 supreme instance of those unaccountable variations 
 which play so vital a part in the evolutionary 
 process. 
 
 But after all, is not the authoritativeness of St. 
 PauFs teaching in all essential things sufficiently 
 demonstrated by the fact that no one ever dreams 
 of questioning it, though some may carry it further 
 than others. Scepticism may allege with perfect 
 propriety that he did not write the books ascribed 
 to him, though to a plain man, accustomed to 
 weigh evidence presented to him in the scales of 
 common sense, the assertion that he did not write 
 the Epistle to the Ephesians seems to be the very 
 despair of disbelief. Or, again, it may allege with 
 much more plausibility that the history upon which 
 St. Paul based his teaching and ordered his life did 
 not occur as he thought it did. But granting — 
 which is undeniable — that the history and person 
 of Jesus Christ were presented to his consciousness 
 in the way in which he says they were, then there 
 is no need (subject to a remark to be made pre- 
 sently) of a further Divine interposition to account 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 107 
 
 for the nature of the inspired teaching which 
 followed upon it, nor any need of a supposed guar- 
 anteed infallibility to secure the authority of that 
 teaching for all who accept the facts upon which it 
 is built. 
 
 But although Inspiration cannot be adduced to 
 prove the objective reality of the events, i.e., the 
 history of Christ, upon which itself depends, yet 
 we must claim for the foregoing account of it, that 
 it adds credibility to the general arguments for the 
 truth of revelation, and goes far to meet some of 
 the objections with which it has been assailed. 
 But this is a large question, of which it is only 
 possible now to indicate the bare outlines. Thus 
 religious Inspiration is seen to be operating in 
 analogy with Inspiration in Nature generally, and 
 may well, therefore, be traced to the will of the 
 same Creative Power, Again, accurate and careful 
 appreciation of phenomena presented to conscious- 
 ness is the foundation of all successful workino* in 
 
 o 
 
 every faculty, and the intimate connection estab- 
 lished by Evolution between the universe out of 
 which self- consciousness comes, and self-conscious- 
 ness reflected back upon its own source, would 
 seem to secure this appreciation for all the best and 
 truest works achieved by the human intelligence. 
 It is, therefore, in the highest degree improbable 
 
108 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION. 
 
 that tlie mea who built up the only religion which 
 appeals to civilised humanity should have been 
 mistaken at the very root of things, and have 
 deduced their doctrines from an environment that 
 had none but an imaginary existence. And once 
 more, it seems impossible that, if they thus built 
 upon a wrong foundation, the conclusions they 
 arrived at should not betray some hopeless incon- 
 sistency with the best thinking, the highest mo- 
 rality, and the true interests of mankind ; thus, 
 if the life of Christ forms no true part of the 
 realities of the Universe, or if there be no God 
 such as the Bible gradually unfolds to us, then it 
 seems fair to ask how it comes to pass that the 
 religion founded upon the belief in these realities 
 has not long ago perished by virtue of its own 
 inherent falseness. It could have no claim to 
 survival. 
 
 The remark alluded to above as necessary to be 
 made to avoid misconception is this : In approach- 
 ing the subject of Inspiration from the human or 
 natural side, we must not be accused of over- 
 looking the theological or supernatural side which 
 is expressed in the Christian doctrine of the Holy 
 Ghost. Upon the human side we are justified in 
 pointing out that the resurrection of Christ inspired 
 the first Christians with new thoughts and towards 
 
THE REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A. 109 
 
 Dew actions, but the actual history represents that 
 to have taken place, or rather to have been begun, 
 by the power of the Holy Spirit at a given time 
 under definite circumstauces. But then the work 
 of the Holy Spirit lies outside the course of natural 
 Evolution, and we have done all that the nature of 
 the case admits when we have established such 
 propositions as these : that Evolution leaves a place 
 open for such work and confesses its need of it ; 
 that it is revealed as operating in analogy with 
 the work of spirit elsewhere in Nature; that the 
 probability of a higher unity to be revealed be- 
 tween Nature and grace is strongly impressed 
 upon us. At present we need only remind our- 
 selves that the Holy Spirit called the disciples to 
 their work by the definite act of Pentecostal In- 
 spiration ; that as a plain matter of experience He 
 has made, in the case of Christ's life, the naturally 
 transitory influence of events and of character 
 permanent through all ages; that He has also 
 made them universal, i.e., correlated them with 
 humanity as a whole ; and finally, that He brings 
 the historical, personal Christ into direct communi- 
 cation with individual souls after an interval of 
 1800 years, so that Christ's presence has become to 
 devout believers the most essential and predomi- 
 nating part of their mental environment. For this 
 
110 INSPIRATION AND EVOLUTION". 
 
 Evolution cannot account, but neither is it called 
 upon to gainsay the fulfilment of that promise of 
 Christ, which constitutes one of the — perhaps un- 
 conscious — prophecies attesting the presence of the 
 Divine power at work in our midst — " He shall 
 receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." 
 
VI. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY, 
 By the Rev. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 
 
 TT may clear tlie ground at the outset if I state 
 that although I have set down the two words 
 "Evolution" and ''Immortality" in juxtaposition 
 at the head of this paper, I am not aware that any 
 close or visible relationship between them has ever 
 been made out. The evidence in favour of the 
 theory of the evolution of physical nature moves 
 along an entirely different road from that on which 
 the proof of the immortality of the soul travels. 
 It may turn out that the one subject has no more 
 connection with the other than the question of the 
 origin of the Nile with that of the duration of sun- 
 heat. At all events for the present, as it seems to 
 me, they traverse widely-separated fields of inquiry. 
 It is necessary, how^ever, to consider the two sub- 
 jects together, if only to demonstrate this fact ; for 
 it is not obvious. On the contrarv. there is a 
 
112 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 vague feeling afloat among us that Evolution may 
 have something very discouraging to say on the 
 subject of immortality. On the surface there are 
 objections to the doctrine of the immortality of the 
 soul which seem to be suggested by the very idea 
 of Evolution. Whether, in glancing at these ob- 
 jections, we come to see that immortality might 
 emerge in some series of development, or whether 
 we fail to discover any bearings of the one upon 
 the other, in either case the burden of the diffi- 
 culties will be lifted if we are brought to the con- 
 clusion that it is not within the province of any 
 believable scheme of Evolution to pronounce a veto 
 on the Christian doctrine of a future life. 
 
 On the surface, I have said, there are objections 
 to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul sug- 
 gested by a contemplation of a scheme of Evolution. 
 In the first place, the unique rank of man in the 
 order of creation appears to be endangered. Evolu- 
 tion brings him into close relations with the animal 
 world. We are to trace our ancestry back to the 
 Ascidians. Not able to claim kinship with such 
 intelligent races as ants and bees we are said to be 
 descended from a creature very like the common 
 earth-worm.^ Death is the fate of all our animal 
 
 1 Haeckel. " Evolution of Man " (Englisli Translation), Vol. L, 
 p. 251. 
 
THE REV. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 113 
 
 relatives, and death is our fate. It is scarcely pre- 
 tended that they have in them that which survives 
 the decay of the body ; how then can we claim to 
 possess it ? What right has the child to a nature 
 that is not found in the parent? Further, ac- 
 cording to the doctrine of Evolution, Nature abhors 
 a revolution as much as she was said by the older 
 naturalists to abhor a vacuum. She progresses 
 in orderly movement. She walks ; she does not 
 leap. But it is difiQcult to conceive of a gradual 
 Evolution of immortality. Either the individual 
 being comes to an end with the stopping of 
 the animal machine, as the watch ceases to tick 
 when the spring is broken, or it continues to 
 exist apart from the dead organism. I do not see 
 how we can imagine any intermediate condition, 
 for even the pagan notion of an underworld of 
 dim shades grants what is essential to the idea 
 of immortality as surely as the Christian doctrine 
 of a strong, full life beyond the grave, since it 
 asserts a continuance of individual existence after 
 the death of the body. But a power thus to exist 
 after the bodily organism has suffered dissolution 
 is a tremendous addition to all that we can predi- 
 cate of creatures in which consciousness is strictly 
 limited to the concomitant activity of physical 
 structure. Have we not here an enormous leap 
 
 H 
 
114 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 — a chasm by the side of which the distinction 
 between fish and mammal, mollusk and insect, and 
 even that between plant and animal, sink into in- 
 significance ? 
 
 Now it should be noted that these objections 
 which are flung across the path of faith in immor- 
 tality from the comparatively new ground of Evolu- 
 tion, are in essence old objections. For everything 
 that can be urged through the theory of Evolution 
 applies equally to the facts of Embryology. In his 
 work on " The Evolution of Man," Professor Haeckel 
 has drawn out an elaborate comparison between 
 what he believes to be the history of the develop- 
 ment of the race and that of the growth of the 
 individual. After studying his tables of compari- 
 son and his parallel diagrams, the reader cannot 
 fail to be impressed with the close resemblance that 
 is there shown to exist between the successive stages 
 of embryonic growth and the rising orders of the 
 animal kingdom. Whether as a race we have 
 descended through generations of animals may be 
 a question, but that as individuals each of us has 
 passed through the condition of a cell, a worm and 
 a fish — though not the fully developed forms of 
 these creatures — there can be no doubt. The 
 question of the relation of immortality to Embryo- 
 logy was discussed long before the days of Darwin 
 
THE REV. W. F. ADENEY, M. A. 115 
 
 and Spencer. The two difficulties noted above 
 apply to this subject as closely as to the develop- 
 ment theory. Can we predicate an immortal life 
 to an untimely abortion ? If not, then at what 
 stage of the foetal growth does the immortal nature 
 appear ? Is it reasonable to suppose that the ovum 
 is immortal? If it is not, must there not be a 
 sudden leap into an entirely new power when im- 
 mortality is acquired, and this while the human 
 organism is growing by gradual and imperceptible 
 stages ? The objection is exactly the same. Nay, 
 it is stronger in the case of Embryology. For here 
 the progress is more rapid. We are struck wdth 
 the rise of a man "From Log Cabin to White 
 House," but we are not surprised to learn that the 
 remote ancestor of the most exalted personage in a 
 great nation was a man of humble origin. It is 
 more remarkable that immortality should emerge 
 in the few months of the growth of an individual 
 in the uterus than that it should appear in the 
 course of the dim ages of a vast series of successive 
 species. The facts of Embryology are not newly 
 revealed. They have been long before the world. 
 Yet in full view of these facts Christian thinkers 
 have been able to hold a doctrine of immortality. 
 If Embryology has failed to disestablish the doc- 
 trine, much less should Evolution do so, seeing that 
 
116 EVOLUTION AND IMMOETALITY. 
 
 Evolution can be made to fight against it only with 
 the very same weapons and at an immensely longer 
 range. 
 
 Nevertheless we cannot dispose of the difficul- 
 ties in this cavalier fashion. To show that they 
 have a wider range and a more ancient origin than 
 is at first apparent is by no means equivalent to 
 demolishing them. Moreover, the new suggestions 
 of Evolution revive the old difficulties of Embryo- 
 logy; they emphasise them and bring them into 
 fresh prominence. Evolution is more openly dis- 
 cussed, and its leading facts have worked their 
 way more freely into the popular imagination. 
 Consequently although, strictly speaking, it does 
 not contribute any new objections to the doctrine 
 of immortality, practically it does tend to raise per- 
 plexing thoughts in regard to that doctrine. At 
 all events, it compels us to face the old difficulties 
 once again. 
 
 Of all " idols," that of tacit assumptions is the 
 greatest hindrance to sound reasoning. It is 
 assumed that on the hypothesis of Evolution a 
 community of nature belongs to all orders of 
 beings, and it is assumed that Evolution demon- 
 strates the smooth and gradual transition from 
 stage to stage of development. But no proof 
 has yet been forthcoming to establish these posi- 
 
THE REV. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 117 
 
 tions throughout the whole range of existence, 
 nor at its most critical stages. According to the 
 scheme which Mr. Herbert Spencer sketched out 
 in his " First Principles," of the development of 
 the solar system from a condition of diffused gas 
 into the present state of sun and planets, with 
 the veo-etable and animal life of our earth, there 
 must have been more than one appearance of 
 novelties which would be quite as striking as the 
 emero-ino- of a life that was able to continue in exist- 
 ence after the dissolution of its physical organism. 
 Life such as we know it could not have existed in 
 the primeval nebulous universe. We are brought 
 to this dilemma : either there was once no life, in 
 which case an entirely new thing must have ap- 
 peared when the first germ was formed ; or the 
 conditions of life must have been wholly inorganic, 
 and then the transition from life in a mass of dif- 
 fused gas without form or substance to life in an 
 organism would be equally startling. But I be- 
 lieve that this alternative has never been seriously 
 advocated. I understand the advocates of the 
 nebular theory of the origin of the universe to 
 hold that there was a time when life did not 
 exist. Sir William Thomsons ingenious sugges- 
 tion of a meteoric invasion of life from other 
 regions of the universe does not affect the case. 
 
118 EVOLUTION AND IMMOETALITY. 
 
 It only throws the question further back, to the 
 first beginnings of life somewhere. Again, there 
 is the question of the origin of consciousness. 
 Whether consciousness arose with the first germ 
 of life, or whether it was superinduced at a later 
 stage of the development of organisms, it is diffi- 
 cult to resist the conclusion that the first appear- 
 ance of it must have been a distinctly new event 
 in the gradual growth of creation. Indeed, for 
 my own part, I should say that the appearance 
 of consciousness was a greater event than the 
 emerging of immortality. Immortality is the con- 
 tinuance of consciousness after physical death. The 
 first dawn of feeling and thought is the most marvel- 
 lous stride in advance of the condition of a world 
 of blank unconsciousness — blind, deaf, impassive. 
 The power of continuing individual thought and 
 volition after the dissolution of the body is also, 
 doubtless, a considerable step forward, but, as it 
 seems to me, a less momentous step. Further, we 
 come upon the facts of self- consciousness. Hart- 
 mann has brought together a striking series of 
 analogies in favour of his fancy for the conscious- 
 ness of the vegetable kingdom.^ The late Pro- 
 fessor Clifi'ord was even more daring in suggesting 
 
 ^ *' Philosophy of the Unconscious " (English Translation), Vol. II., 
 ch. iv. 
 
THE KEY. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 119 
 
 the existence of a uniYersal diflfusion of ''miud- 
 stuff" corresponding to the whole uniYerse of 
 matter. But it is not pretended that these lower 
 forms of consciousness, if they exist, have any- 
 thing like the self-consciousness of personality 
 which we discover in ourselves. Hartmann does 
 not venture to predicate a unity of consciousness 
 in a tree. The most that he imagines is a separate 
 spark of consciousness in each of the myriads of 
 cells in root, branch, leaf, and flower. It is diffi- 
 cult to conceive of what ''mind-stuff" could be; 
 but the nearest approach to an intelligible con- 
 ception of it would suggest that it was the ele- 
 ment out of which a higher consciousness was to be 
 formed. The further we permit the imagination of 
 physicists to posit the existence of consciousness, 
 the more marked and certain will the distinction 
 between this dim elementary consciousness and the 
 self-consciousness of the human personality become. 
 The knowledge of personal identity in memory, the 
 power of directing the current of thought, the origi- 
 nating efforts of will— these things differ toto ccelo 
 from the dull sense of uneasiness or satisfaction 
 which is about the most that we should venture to 
 affirm of a cell. Here again an enormous stride 
 has been taken. At some time in the ascending 
 order of life, mere sensation has been superseded by 
 
120 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 self-conscious personality. The appearance of life 
 in the universe, the dawn of consciousness, the 
 existence of self-consciousness, are all of them in- 
 dications of great novelties parallel to the novelty 
 of immortality. If the gradual evolution of organ- 
 isms has been consistent with these several intro- 
 ductions of new forms of existence, is it unreasonable 
 to suppose that it may be consistent with the super- 
 vention of a power of surviving the shock of physical 
 dissolution ? 
 
 Even among the facts of present observation we 
 meet with analogies to this appearance of the new 
 power of immortality in the vast domain of a mortal 
 universe. Thus there must be vibrations of air 
 too rapid for detection by our ears, so that if we 
 had finer ears many sounds now inaudible would 
 be perceived. As the rate of these vibrations is 
 reduced, there comes a point at which they are able 
 to impinge upon our sensory faculties, i.e., there is 
 a moment when they first touch consciousness. 
 Similarly, a comet is invisible to the naked eye 
 when travelling towards the sun from remote 
 regions of space ; but at length it is near enough 
 to be detected by some sharp-sighted person. For 
 that person there is a point at which the invisible 
 becomes visible. Again, when one's tooth is sufi'er- 
 ing from caries, an irritating action is set up that 
 
THE REV. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 121 
 
 worries the nerve into pain. Before this, the dis- 
 order was below the level of consciousness, but in 
 the aggravation of its symptoms it has at length 
 touched that level. There must be some point at 
 which this happens — a stage at which one begins to 
 feel toothache, however mild the beginning may be. 
 A finely-balanced scale turns suddenly when the 
 minutest addition is brought to either side of it. 
 As soon as a vessel of water is full, it suddenly 
 begins to overflow, although it is being fed by a 
 continuous and changeless stream. So may it not 
 be, that when the continuous stream of life and 
 consciousness rises above a certain level, it over- 
 flows the limits of mortality, and acquires the 
 power of persisting after the death of its accom- 
 panying organism ? It would seem that most 
 forms of life are not sufficiently stable to hold 
 together apart from the physical structure in which 
 they are involved. Whether the structure has 
 secreted the life symptoms, or whether, as seems 
 more consonant with the facts, the life power has 
 built up the structure about itself, it is still, 
 apparently, too feeble to continue in existence after 
 the walls of its house have crumbled away. It is 
 so interwoven with the fabric of its physical habita- 
 tion that the dissolution of this fabric brings about 
 the extinction of its own existence. It has not 
 
122 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 sufficient stability to continue in a state of vital 
 nudity. We have no proof of this fact, and we 
 must bear in mind Bishop Butler's cautious remark, 
 that we do not know that animals are incapable of 
 surviving death. Still the reasons that induce a 
 belief in the immortality of the human soul do not 
 apply to the merely animal world. But it is by no 
 means contrary to analogy to suppose that a being 
 should have appeared with sufficient vigour of 
 vitality and sufficient substance of mind to stand 
 the shock of the dissolution of its corporeal en- 
 vironment, and to be able either to continue to 
 exist in an immaterial world, or to gather about 
 itself the elements of a new^ organism. 
 
 There is one characteristic of our own natures 
 which seems to be essential to this power of con- 
 tinuing in existence after the death of the body. 
 In regard to a being that does not possess the idea 
 of personal identity, or the self-consciousness of 
 personality, the very notion of immortality is illu- 
 sory. The identity of our body is simply a his- 
 torical identity. Every element of the body has 
 changed several times over during the course of 
 a lifetime, and yet the body is regarded as one 
 and the same throughout, just as Herod's temple 
 was treated as identical with the temple that 
 Haggai knew, because the rebuilding was gradual 
 
THE REV. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 123 
 
 and was carried on side by side with the demoli- 
 tion of the several parts of the old structure. But 
 when once the body has been destroyed, even the 
 gathering together of all the elements from the 
 grave, according to the old notion of the resurrection, 
 would not result in the perpetuation of the same 
 body. It would be a new body after dissolution, 
 though made out of the identical elements of the 
 old body, while before dissolution the sameness of 
 the body is preserved, though the materials out 
 of which it is constructed are in a continual state 
 of flux. If, then, the living being that inhabits 
 the body has no element of identity in itself, the 
 dissolution of the body would seem to involve the 
 cessation of its individual existence. But if it has 
 such an element the case is entirely altered. The 
 self-conscious personality becomes the basis of a 
 possible immortality. I do not regard this as in 
 itself a promise of immortality, for I see nothing 
 in the idea of a self-conscious personality to 
 forbid its own extinction. But it is a ground 
 of possible immortality ; i.e., it is no longer im- 
 possible for immortality to be predicated of a 
 being that possesses this condition, as it would 
 seem to be impossible to predicate it of one that 
 had no personal identity apart from the bodily 
 
 organism. 
 
124 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 This point may be made clearer if we return for 
 a moment to a previous position. The lower we 
 place the appearance of consciousness in Nature, 
 the less stability must we credit it with, because 
 we thus remove it further and further back from 
 the limit of self-consciousness. The supposed con- 
 scious cells of a tree cannot be thought to have 
 any sense of personal identity. If, at the death 
 of the tree, the vital power that is then liberated 
 enters into new forms of life, we have, indeed, a 
 case of a certain sort of immortality. The vital 
 power still exists and works. It is not put out of 
 beiug. So if there should be " mind-stuff," then, 
 while the stock of it is not reduced, we have again 
 a kind of immortality. This just corresponds, to 
 the indestructibility of matter. It goes with the 
 whole course of Nature to say that what once 
 existed will always exist. But in these cases the 
 absence of the self-consciousness of personal identity, 
 robs the idea of immortality of what to us is its 
 most valuable attribute. What we see here is at 
 best a type of the transmigration of souls. Me- 
 tempsychosis without memory is practically iden- 
 tical with the persistence of force, excepting that 
 it denies to certain vital forces the liability of 
 being transmuted into alien forces — ^light, heat, 
 &c. It asserts that vital force is persistent. But 
 
THE REV. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 125 
 
 this seems to be contrary to known facts of organic 
 decay, altliougli the recently discovered bacilli and 
 bacteria bring us very near to it. In these cases, 
 however, the essential characteristic of all that we 
 value in immortality is missed. The stream of 
 consciousness is not unified by the sense of per- 
 sonality. The advent of that wouderful form of 
 consciousness revolutionises the whole scene, and 
 lays a broad foundation on which a genuine im- 
 mortality may be based. 
 
 It will be said that in all this I have adduced 
 no evidence in favour of the doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of the soul. It is all surmise and possibility. 
 True. "We cannot establish the doctrine from a 
 consideration of the analogies of Nature. The use 
 of these analogies, however, is not the less im- 
 portant. It is, as Bishop Butler pointed out, to 
 remove objections. If it can be shown that the 
 doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not so 
 contrary to the constitution and course of Nature 
 when viewed under a scheme of Evolution as is 
 sometimes supposed, then the difficulties which are 
 felt on this account must be lightened. To estab- 
 lish the truth of the doctrine, we must approach 
 it from an entirely different point of view. It is 
 not a question of physical investigation. If it were 
 so, it would be an impertinence for any one who 
 
126 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 was not an expert in physics to meddle with it. 
 But it does not belong to the range of physiology. 
 It is a question of psychology and of theology. 
 
 It seems to me that while Evolutionists claim 
 the functions of mind to come within the course of 
 development, and while they are working out pro- 
 blems of sociology and politics on this hypothesis, 
 they must be proved to be wrong before it can be 
 asserted that mental functions do not fall within 
 the range of Evolution. But, meanwhile, the case 
 of the structure of mind is different. In the 
 physical world Evolution is traced through organic 
 structure as well as through functional activities. 
 In the mental world it is being applied to function, 
 but it has not yet been shown to apply to struc- 
 ture. The nature of the human mind presents a 
 problem which, at present, simply confounds the 
 Evolutionist. When, however, this mental nature 
 is studied on its own account, it does not vex us 
 with silence. We can know ourselves to a con- 
 siderable extent, and in considering the great 
 mystery of iramortality, it is the ego that is known 
 in experience, apart from the investigations of 
 Evolution, that we are concerned with. 
 
 When we think of the enormous impetus that 
 has been given to the study of physical science in 
 the present century, it is not at all surprising that 
 
THE REV. W. F. ADENEY, M.A. 127 
 
 the stability of a truth that is based on a founda- 
 tion wholly outside the range of physics should be 
 brought into question. The naturalist not only 
 sees that death is universal from the centurial 
 elephant to the ephemeral fly ; he discovers no- 
 thing in the development and constitution of 
 living organisms that is independent of the uni- 
 versal mortality — no minute gland or cell that 
 might be the germ of revived energy. The whole 
 fabric dissolves into inorganic gases, salts, &c. 
 The revival of frozen fishes and the awakening of 
 dried germs are not in any way parallel to the 
 immortality of the soul, because, though functions 
 may have been long suspended, organic structure 
 has not been injured. So-called analogies like 
 that of the butterfly and the chrysalis are merely 
 picturesque illustrations, and not true analogies at 
 all, for they are cases of development and growth 
 — not of death and resurrection. If Nature is 
 silent in regard to immortality, we are not to be 
 surprised that the exclusive study of Nature should 
 leave the idea of immortality shadowy and doubt- 
 ful. But it will be a great point to have come to 
 see that Nature has nothing to say against the 
 immortality of that which is above the range of 
 material structure. Then we are free to look to 
 the positive evidence for this truth in its own 
 
128 EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 region by the study of the moral nature of man, 
 the Fatherly government of God, the words, life, 
 and resurrection of Christ. In particular, it is 
 very significant that though our Lord revealed few- 
 details of the future life, His language in affirming 
 the existence of that life was unmistakably clear 
 and unhesitatingly positive. 
 
VII. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 By the Rev. JOHN MATTHEWS. 
 
 TJERBERT SPENCER says of Darwin— " His 
 
 reasonings show us an unconscious mingling 
 of tlie belief in a supernaturally impressed ten- 
 dency to develop, with the belief in a development 
 arising from the changing incidence of conditions." 
 In the concluding pages of " Animals and Plants 
 under Domestication " Darwin speaks of the " Om- 
 nipotent and Omniscient Creator, who ordains 
 everything and foresees everything." He stoutly 
 maintained that his theory was quite consonant 
 with tlie doctrine of design in Nature. His 
 accounts of the fertilisation of orchids by in- 
 sects, and, indeed, all his writings, abound with 
 language that implies contrivance, adjustment, 
 pre-established harmony between life and its con- 
 ditions. He states in one paragraph — " How inter- 
 esting it is to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed 
 with many plants, and to reflect that those elabo- 
 
130 EVOLUTION AND THE PEOBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 lately coustructed forms, so different from each 
 other, and dependent on each other in so complex 
 a manner, have all been produced by laws acting 
 round us. There is grandeur in this view of life, 
 with its several powers having been originally 
 breathed by the Creator into a few forms, or into 
 one ; and that while this planet has gone cycling 
 on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from 
 so simple a beginning endless forms, most beauti- 
 ful and wonderful, have been, and are being, 
 evolved." 
 
 There is in these words a far fuller recoo-nitioii 
 of the Divine personality than you can find in the 
 writings of Herbert Spencer, with their reasoned 
 agnosticism and their deification of mechanical 
 energy. It is only fair, however, to the present 
 Evolutionist school to say that they are showing 
 signs of dissatisfaction with the Spencerian agnos- 
 ticism and its half-mechanical, half-metaphysical 
 postulate of energy as the explanation of Nature 
 and history. The widest divergence on these points 
 from the master has been expressed by Mr. John 
 Fiske, a most ardent admirer and disciple of Mr. 
 Spencer, on the purely scientific side of his work. 
 In his latest book, '' The Idea of God as affected by 
 Modern Science," Mr. Fiske attempts to show that 
 his present theistic and Christian attitude was fore- 
 
THE REV. JOHN MATTHEWS. 131 
 
 shadowed in his earlier writings ; though many of 
 his readers would be disposed to demur to this, 
 and to reply, that if it were so the theism of the 
 early writings was quite neutralised, if not swamped, 
 by agnostic associations. Let us, however, rejoice 
 to welcome Mr. Fiske as an ally, and let us hope, 
 also, that his great teacher may, on this subject, 
 condescend to learn even from his brilliant pupil 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. In the event of 
 such a reconciliation, neither Mr. Spencer nor Mr. 
 Fiske would be able to discover the theistic ele- 
 ments in the early Spencerian writings. The pre- 
 science and the comprehensiveness are to be credited 
 mainly to Mr. Fiske. His attitude probably points 
 to an early harmony between science and faith on 
 the principle that law, force, environment, selec- 
 tion, and evolution are all modes of the action of 
 the Supreme Mind, and that the development of 
 life and the progress of mankind demand for their 
 sources and factors a personal, omnipresent God, 
 and such a revelation of Him as we have in Christ. 
 Evolution does not simply relate itself to theism 
 or pantheism as a loose ulster fits a man six feet 
 or a man five feet six. It adjusts itself to Christian 
 ideas in a more vital way, as the muscles are corre- 
 lated with the nervous system in the body, aud the 
 bony structure with the muscular. The evolution 
 
132 EVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 of Christian civilisation cannot be explained apart 
 from the past and present work of Christ in the 
 hearts and consciences of men. 
 
 The harmony of Evolution with the Christian 
 ideas of creation, providence, the character of 
 Christ, and a future life has already been shown. 
 It remains for us to note a few particulars in which 
 a Christianised scheme of development would throw 
 light on the problems of sin and evil. It is some- 
 times asserted that the doctrine of development 
 ignores, not to say negatives, the Christian idea of 
 sin. This is by no means a consequence of accept- 
 ing the Darwinian belief. Evolution does not deny 
 the evil and criminality of sin, and the pathological 
 condition it has set up in society and our circum- 
 stances. It emphasizes these facts, and by its 
 assertion of the law of continuity, and the con- 
 servation of energy, and the law of the multiplica- 
 tion of effects, it declares that all want of corre- 
 spondence with environment, and all violations of 
 the law of progress, are attended by results of a 
 momentous and lasting character. On these points 
 it is far more ethical than some popular theories of 
 the atonement which ascribe to the death of Christ 
 a direct physically causative power. It affirms 
 with Dr. Maitineau that ''sin is the choice of a 
 lower line of action in presence of a higher pos- 
 
THE REV. JOHN MATTHEWS. 133 
 
 sibility." It discovers to us the free vail of man, 
 ay, his own personality, beset by evil ancestral 
 residua in the body, by social aggregates of evil, 
 by the remains of barbaric ideas and usages in the 
 theologies, industries, and politics of society. It 
 aflBrms that the law of all existence is struggle and 
 progress. It points us, on the other side, to the 
 ascending social and spiritual environment Christ's 
 kingdom has secured for us. And it demands, as 
 the law of duty, not some vast abstract idea of 
 right, but that we reject the lower and choose the 
 higher as it comes to us day by day. The failure 
 to do that is sin — the eternal antagonist of good, 
 the parent of nothing but disease and death. The 
 spiritual environment that surrounds us is ever 
 advancing to more complex and elevated forms. 
 Not to adapt ourselves to these later and more 
 perfect unfoldings is sin, necessarily entailing 
 paralysis, failure, decay. Physical death is the 
 consequence not only of general w^aiit of adapta- 
 tion to environment, but often follows from the 
 failure of any chief organ so to adapt itself The 
 full attainment of life in all its compass and pos- 
 sibility demands the adjustment of every organ 
 and power to the environment that is accessible. 
 The same law applies to the spiritual kingdom. 
 Sin with the Evolutionist is not some Adamic 
 
134 EVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 liability incurred for us by the act of another. It 
 is the recognition of progressive light and power 
 without us and in us, and the deliberate refusal to 
 adjust our nature to that larger light and increas- 
 ing good. This was the sin of the Jews in our 
 Lord's day. It was the temptation that constantly 
 assailed His disciples. To live in accordance with 
 an older and narrower economy, to rest upon and 
 use worn-out beliefs, no longer representing reality, 
 is sin, followed close by atrophy and death. To 
 rescue us from such torpor, and to stir all our 
 energies to respond to and react upon the forces of 
 the kingdom tbat encompasses us is the aim of the 
 work of the Holy Spirit of God. In the prosecu- 
 tion of tbat work the Christian Evolutionist believes 
 that the Divine compassion and power will not 
 finally fail, but will unfold a perfect universe, and 
 will perfectly adjust to the glories of that new 
 creation all the powers of those who are not per- 
 sistently rebellious, as *' perfect music is matched 
 to noble words." At the same time, science refuses 
 to admit that any good can come out of sin per se. 
 The universe owes it nothinor but hatred and ex- 
 pulsion. The original constitution of the universe, 
 in the view of science, is so perfect and so full of 
 the proofs of God's goodness, sacrifice, and pity, 
 that the slightest deviation from its laws is in- 
 
THE REV. JOHN MATTHEWS. 135 
 
 finitely foolish and wrong. The modern ascription 
 to sin of great beneficial power, and the estimate of 
 it as the condition of God's love, the incarnation of 
 Christ, and even of the existence of civilisation, 
 as Dr. Be van, in a recently published volume of 
 sermons on Christ and the Age, has asserted, even 
 going so far as to afiirm that " the very power to 
 partake in the Divine nature is the result of the 
 human fall," is in our judgment utterly unethical 
 and unscientific. The purpose of the Divine inter- 
 position in the work of Christ is to realise the 
 original idea of God in the creation of the human 
 race. Christ's incarnation, civilisation, by which 
 we mean the supremacy of mind over the material 
 world, and the use of its resources for the welfare 
 of the community, are part of the primal purpose of 
 God, to be fulfilled in any case, whether the world 
 is obedient, or partly obedient, or wholly sinful. 
 The moral state of mankind of course helps to 
 shape the form in which these objects are fulfilled, 
 but the substance of the purpose is to be executed 
 in any case. The presence of sin in the world has 
 retarded and clouded the glory of the manifestation 
 of God's love, and checked the progress of the race 
 intellectually and physically, as well as spiritually. 
 It is impossible for perfect natures ever to view 
 such an evil with other feelings than regret. It is 
 
136 EVOLUTION AND THE PEOBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 equally impossible for us to understand how free 
 and active personalities can be prevented from 
 sinning, if they deliberately elect to make that use 
 of their freedom. Such statements as those of Dr. 
 Bevan proceed upon this error : they do not suffi- 
 ciently take into account the ordinary, limited, 
 dependent state even of obedient, sinless man, and 
 the necessary conditions of his development by 
 struggle and sacrifice, as evoking such revelations 
 of Divine pity and sympathy and sacrifice as must 
 attract the interest of all higher orders of beings. 
 The Divine sacrifice is postulated in the very ideas 
 of creation and providence. Science teaches us 
 that much we have been taught by superstition 
 to call evil is good, and a condition of the develop- 
 ment of moral character. Storms, earthquakes, 
 changes, extreme heat and cold, are not evils. 
 They are part of the original purpose of God, and 
 the means of the training and discipline of life on 
 the earth. A finite being, such as man was origi- 
 nally, beginning at a humble point, with all his 
 progress to be reached by struggle and denial, in 
 such a world as ours, must have needed, even as a 
 sinless, loyal soul, the revelation of God's sympathy, 
 the inspiration of His Spirit, the advent of Christ ; 
 and would certainly have had these blessings more 
 perfectly as a holy soul than as a sinner. The 
 
THE REV. JOHN MATTHEWS. 137 
 
 primary equipment of the universe provided for 
 all the needs of growing life. All exceptional 
 manifestations and miraculous interventions only- 
 reveal the eternal goodness and sacrifice of God, 
 on which we are to build, when the occasional 
 has passed away. It was not necessary for the 
 prodigal to go into a far country and become 
 a swineherd to find out the father s love. Con- 
 tinued obedience at home would have revealed 
 that love more fully, and with a depth of in- 
 ward peace more blessed than the rapture of 
 forgiveness and the welcome home. The Cross 
 is the masterpiece of God's wisdom, not only as 
 securing the means of the forgiveness of sin, but 
 likewise as a power arresting, localising, and pre- 
 venting sin. And this conception is in accord 
 with all ethical and mental science, neither of 
 which can find anything in sin but lasting disad- 
 vantage to the person and the world. The growth 
 of Christ's character from childhood to His perfect 
 manhood, conditional upon constant efi'ort, denial, 
 sufi'ering, yet utterly free from all sinful taint, is 
 proof enough that sin is no necessity to finite 
 beings, in such a world as this, however severely 
 they may be tempted. If sin, then, has no such 
 causative power for good, and if the world was 
 organised for the benefit of obedient wills, how are 
 
138 EVOLUTION AND THE PEOBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 we to explain the signs of disease, suffering, cruelty, 
 death, which have marked the whole progress of 
 life on the earth *? Are we to accept BushnelFs 
 theory that, in prevision of the fall of Adam, God, 
 to fit the world to fallen mau, and to make all 
 creation a mirror of his restless spirit, made the 
 animals, and serpents, and parasites, with all their 
 deadly weapons and poisons and treachery ? We 
 can hardly see the wisdom or necessity of such a 
 course, and we cannot see how it is to be reconciled 
 with the Divine benevolence. If all the sufferinof 
 that has been experienced by the animal creation 
 through incalculable ages has been designed in 
 order to reveal man to himself, why has not greater 
 provision been made to convey to the higher crea- 
 ture the precise extent and intensity of that suffer- 
 ing, that he may learn gratitude to his benefactors ? 
 Besides, the acts of animals are all of an instinc- 
 tive, automatic character, while man's are of a 
 different quality, being the products of free, 
 rational, and responsible beings. Such a theory 
 will not bear examination. It is equally absurd 
 on scientific and ethical grounds. We cannot hold 
 with J. S. Mill that the phenomena of Nature call 
 for a dualistic explanation ; that they are the re- 
 sults of the antagonism of two equally powerful 
 beings. AVe cannot accept the conclusion that the 
 
THE EEV. JOHN MATTHEWS. 139 
 
 existence of evil proves either that God's goodness 
 is defective or His power restricted. Philosophy 
 and revelation, the instincts of the heart, the con- 
 clusions of the reason, compel the belief that God 
 is absolutely perfect. 
 
 The blended thou^^ht of Paul and Darwin throws 
 light on the mystery. The realm of Nature is the 
 scene of perpetual struggle and sacrifice for the 
 progress of life, for the discipline of energy and 
 character, beginning with the lower forms of life 
 and ending with man. That process which we call 
 evil the Creator accepts the responsibility of, and 
 provides for its sufficient compensations. The issues 
 that will flow from it, the uses to which it is turned, 
 will amply vindicate and glorify His goodness when 
 all is explained. Meanwhile the universality of the 
 law of sacrifice, from which no life escapes, and to 
 which even the Highest bows, suggests its profound 
 necessity and helps us to submit to it. In this early 
 stage of growth we find that our deepest peace 
 springs from our greatest pains. What compensa- 
 tions eternity will afford do not yet appear. Chris- 
 tian Evolution, then, views sin as the bane of 
 existence, for which the creature only is responsible. 
 But the conditions of the growth of progressive 
 beings, through ignorance, weakness, and struggle 
 to perfection, are eternally fixed by the Creator. 
 
140 EVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 He accepts the responsibility for tliem, and, con- 
 necting them with direct and blessed manifestations 
 of His goodness and high ends of creatural good, 
 His method stands for ever justified. J 
 
 A transfigured doctrine of evolution also throws 1 
 light on what is called the fall of man. Paul, in ' 
 
 the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans, 
 shows how the Evolution of law carries with it 
 transgression and conscious sin : " Howbeit I had 
 not known sin, except through the law." " Apart 
 from the law, sin is dead." '*And I was alive 
 apart from the law once ; but when the command- 
 ment came sin revived, and I died." This is the 
 record of his own experience, and that of all 
 men. It supplies us with the key to the interpre- 
 tation of the Adamic fall. If no law had been 
 imposed on Adam there had been no sin and no 
 fall. But the time in man's development had 
 come, when a greater wrong would be inflicted 
 on him if he is not trained by law than if he has 
 law and breaks it. The third chapter of Genesis 
 gives us an account of the first application of 
 moral law to man in the form of restraint. 
 Concurrently with the progress of law there is 
 going on within him a development of the moral 
 sense. Put these three factors together — desire, 
 law, conscience — and you have, when the law is 
 
THE REV. JOHN MATTHEWS. 141 
 
 traversed, the ptienomena of a conscious fall. Mau 
 judges himself, condemns himself, and has there- 
 fore attained a higher life. The prehistoric man 
 has no such experience, is under no moral law, 
 blunders and errs as a child, but does not know it. 
 Directly the primitive customs necessary to pre- 
 serve life have been developed to the moral stage, 
 and man is dealt with as a being possessing a 
 moral nature, he becomes conscious of the folly 
 and criminality of deeds he had not felt as sins 
 before. He condemns himself, negatives the past, 
 refuses to fall back to it, creates a new future, 
 beholds the increasing law of the future, and 
 presses forward to its fulfilment. The evolution 
 of the moral sense of nations an% communities is 
 regulated by the same law. There is first a period 
 of childhood, of unconscious, wilful energy, un- 
 regulated by law. Then comes the recognition of 
 hio-her obligations, and the awakenino; of a new 
 moral sense. The old policies and wars and 
 usages are condemned. The nation repents of its 
 past misdeeds. It cannot repeat them. All its 
 energies are concentrated in the effort to realise 
 new ideals and obligations. 
 
I 
 
 VIII 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE 
 OF SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 By Rev. Prof. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 
 
 T^HE description placed at the liead of this article 
 admits of a twofold sense : it may mean the 
 bearing of the scientific doctrine of Evolution upon 
 the doctrine of Sin and Redemption, as set forth in 
 the Bible, or th^ Evolution of the doctrine of Sin 
 and Redemption, in the historic form of the Sacred 
 Writings. The one awakens the inquiry, What is 
 the efi'ect of the current view of Evolution, suppos- 
 ing it to be true, upon our ideas of Sin and Redemp- 
 tion, as those ideas are believed to be embodied in 
 the teaching of the Bible ? The other starts the 
 question. What are the characteristics of the gradual 
 evolution of the ideas of Sin and Redemption, as 
 we find it traceable in the Biblical documents? 
 Thus it will be seen that the one question raises a 
 possible controversy between science and theology ; 
 while the other proceeds on the assumption that 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 143 
 
 the principle of Evolution in all things is accepted, 
 and that our present business is to notice its illus- 
 tration in the steady progression, in the Bible, from 
 some germinal idea of Sin and Eedemption to thab 
 full form of the doctrine now held by the Christian 
 Church. The distinction thus drawn between the 
 different interpretations that may be put on the 
 heading of this paper is important, because, while 
 the phrase is in common use, and on that account 
 is adopted, the treatment of the subject required in 
 the two cases must be totally different, and could 
 scarcely be comprised within the limits now at our 
 disposal. I may say, once for all, that my present 
 purpose is not to deal with the purely theological 
 question of the development, or, if the ambiguous 
 expression be preferred, the " evolution " of certain 
 doctrines in successive documents known as Biblical, 
 but with the bearing of the scientific doctrine of 
 the Evolution of man, supposing it to be established, 
 on the accepted views of Sin and Eedemption — 
 whether, in fact, it is destructive of those views or 
 compatible with them, or whether those views can 
 and must be modified so as to square with what is 
 affirmed to be an established fact in the order of 
 Nature. 
 
 At the same time, inasmuch as we Lave to deal 
 with scientific ideas, I may as well say that, in my 
 
144 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 judgment there is a very loose employment of the 
 term " Evolution " by some theological writers in 
 reference to what really does not admit of the 
 application of the term in the scientific sense. I 
 can readily fancy how some of our ardent scientific 
 men may be delighted to observe the eagerness with 
 which popular preachers and writers seize hold of 
 their favourite term " Evolution," and teach that in 
 the Bible there is an Evolution of this and that 
 doctrine, and, in fact, that Christianity itself is an 
 Evolution ; but the delight is blended with much 
 amusement as they notice how utterly unlike their 
 Evolution is this Evolution of doctrine. Accord- 
 in o- to the scientific view. Evolution is nothing if it 
 is not pure naturalism ; it is the gradual passing of 
 a purely natural thing, under the influence of a 
 purely natural environment, into a higher form 
 of existence. All the elements entering into the 
 higher type were previously existing 'in Nature, 
 and by hypothesis there is no room for anything 
 but Nature. Evolution is simply a name for a 
 process in the action of purely natural forces. If, 
 then, we use scientific language, with its proper 
 scientific connotation, and speak of an Evolution 
 of Biblical doctrine or of Christianity, we at once 
 exclude every supernatural element — we shut ofi" 
 of necessity all direct Divine action. If, on the 
 
THE REV. PPvOF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 145 
 
 other hand, we use the language in a ?2 on-scientific 
 sense, i.e., if we include in it an element not found 
 in pure naturalism, then it is of no value for the 
 purpose for which it is generally adopted, namely, 
 that of showing that the rigid principles of science 
 hold o-ood of the doctrines which as Christians we 
 hold. For instance, the Evolution, in the scientific 
 sense of the term, of the doctrine of Kedemption 
 would mean, that in the early records of the Bible 
 there is found a dim notion, purely natural in 
 origin, of getting rid of an evil ; that in the course 
 of ages the natural action of human thought and 
 effort, combined with social influences, so acted on 
 this primitive notion as to cause it to expand, and 
 that still later a similar process, purely natural, 
 went on till there evolved the full Christian idea of 
 Kedemption. A natural environment, acting on a 
 natural idea, evolved a natural result. Had there 
 occurred at any points in the history of mankind 
 any specific Divine acts of Kevelation, or of Incar- 
 nation, the chain of simple Nature would have been 
 supplemented ; and however much men may have 
 worked up ideas on these acts, the so-called Evolu- 
 tion of Kevelation, or of Incarnation, would have 
 been as unlike the usual scientific Evolution as the 
 Kesurrection of Christ is unlike awakening out of 
 sleep. The Evolution of our idea of a Kevelation, 
 
146 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 or of the IncarnatioD, is one thing ; the Evolution 
 of Divine teaching on these subjects, or of the 
 things themselves, is another. Divine teaching 
 may consist of successive acts, each of which adds 
 some item to the sum of religious knowledge ; but 
 it is a misnomer to speak of the Evolution of 
 Divine teaching, i.e., of Eevelation. Scientific 
 men do not understand such a use of language. 
 There is, I know, a school of naturalistic theo- 
 logians ; but their handling of the Bible is any- 
 thing but natural, and, consequently, truly rational. 
 It is neither good for literature nor theology to use 
 scientific terms as though in the use of those terms 
 we were in harmony with science, when, in reality, 
 we mean w^hat science can never attain to, and 
 that, too, without any disparagement to its real 
 value. Nor does it much improve the position to 
 say that, as a fact, there is in human experience 
 the general action of the Divine Spirit on the 
 human spirit in the course of the struggle of life, 
 and that this being a common factor in the history 
 of the race, it must be included in the environment 
 which, acting on the germinal ideas in man, causes 
 them to evolve into the more perfect form of Chris- 
 tian doctrine ; for, while we may freely admit the 
 fact of such Divine influence, it is obvious that in 
 so doino- we have got outside the scientific circle 
 
THE KEY. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 147 
 
 of the necessary co-ordinated series of antecedents 
 and consequents which constitute Nature. That 
 there is a progression in the development of doctrine 
 in the Bible is unquestionable, but what I would 
 emphasize is, that it is not an Evolution of doctrine 
 in the sense which strictly scientific men attach to 
 that term, and that it is misleading to make such 
 a free use of it in popular literature. 
 
 In considering the bearing of the modern scien- 
 tific doctrine of Evolution on the Biblical doctrine 
 of Sin and Kedemption, it is first of all desirable 
 to understand clearly the sense we attach to the 
 terms employed. So far as concerns Sin and Ee- 
 demption, it is not necessary for the purpose im- 
 mediately before us to enter into an elaborate 
 statement or exposition of the various shades of 
 opinion in the theological world as to the nature, 
 origin, and effects of Sin on the one hand, and the 
 necessity, nature, and application of the redemptive 
 work of Christ on the other. There is, if we ex- 
 clude the strictly naturalistic theology, which only 
 by courtesy can be called Christian, a general con- 
 sensus of opinion respecting the teaching of Scrip- 
 ture on these two cardinal points : — a consensus 
 which allows room for considerable diversity of 
 judgment when we attempt to frame theories of 
 Sin and Kedemption. Eccent years have witnessed 
 
148 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 some valuable accessions to our list of standard 
 works on the theology of both the Old and the 
 New Testament, thus laying a foundation for the 
 elaboration in the future of a more perfect body of 
 systematised theology than at present exists. Ac- 
 cording to the conclusions arrived at by modern 
 Biblical theology, and I may add, in the main, by 
 the most judicious investigators of former times. 
 Sin is regarded as an act, a state, and a tendency 
 — as an act it is the individual assertion of self- 
 hood against the law and authority of God ; as a 
 state it is a condition of alienation from the holy 
 nature of God ; and as a tendency it is a force 
 which, left to its own course, must issue in de- 
 struction of body and soul. In other words, Sin 
 is antagonism to God and universal, moral, and 
 physical order ; it is the degeneration of a spiritual 
 nature, and renders the being in whom it dwells 
 liable to the most terrible punishment. On the 
 other hand, Eedemption is regarded as a Divinely 
 originated means ; a process and an issue ; having 
 its centre and finding its value in the person and 
 work of Christ. As a means it is the life, the sac- 
 rifice, and intercession of the Son of God ; as a pro- 
 cess it is the efiectual application of His work to 
 the actual necessities of man by the co-operation of 
 the Holy Spirit, and as an issue it is the realisation 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 149 
 
 in the individual and tlie race of the end for which 
 the economy of grace was instituted, namely, the 
 attainment of the spiritual perfection which con- 
 sists in conformity of nature to the nature of God 
 — the restoration of the lost harmony. Thus it 
 will be seen that both Sin and Redemption involve 
 spiritual relations — the varied relations of the indi- 
 vidual human spirit to a personal God. The one 
 implies a breach of relations, and the other a 
 restoration of relations. They both imply a direct 
 action of will in respect to Divine Will, and the 
 recognition of moral law ; while Redemption im- 
 plies, also, a supernatural provision by which a 
 breach of relations may be healed. 
 
 In indicating what we are to understand by 
 Evolution as affecting these views of Sin and Re- 
 demption, it is necessary to bear in mind the 
 distinction I have made in another paper of 
 this series between Evolution in the most absolute 
 sense and Evolution as applied to account for the 
 origin of specific forms of life on the globe. There 
 is much curiosity in some quarters, and anxiety in 
 others, as to what modifications may be impending 
 in the current views on Sin and Redemption con- 
 sequent on the supposed truth of the doctrine of 
 Evolution. It is not possible to deal with this 
 state of mind satisfactorily unless the distinctions 
 
150 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 I have elsewhere made are kept clearly in view. 
 The answers that must be given to the prevalent 
 questioning will differ according as we are thinking 
 of Evolution as held by Mr. Spencer or as held by 
 theists. If we take the former, and regard Evolu- 
 tion as the method by which undifferentiated ulti- 
 mates of matter, under the action of force, have 
 become differentiated and integrated so as to give 
 rise to the physical universe as we now know it, 
 and if all this is but the manifestation of an Un- 
 knowable Keality of which Personality cannot be 
 predicated, then it is useless to talk of Sin and 
 Eedemption in the Biblical sense of those terms, 
 seeinof that there is no God whose Will is law, no 
 Sin as a rebellion against an intelligent Euler, no 
 Incarnation of the Son of God as a means of Ee- 
 demption, and, in short, no revealed supernatural 
 religion. Mr. Spencer must smile at the ignorant 
 attempts often made to harmonise Christian doc- 
 trine with Evolution as he holds it. The only 
 effect of his view of the universe is to annihilate 
 Eevelation and Christianity. Any attempt to tone 
 down the Christian writers with the hope of lessen- 
 ing the antagonism to the scientific position, and 
 of disposing him and his followers to accept a 
 modified Christianity, only reveals the unfitness of 
 those who make it to enter into the arena of higher 
 
151 
 
 apologetics. Of course if he is right in his account 
 of the nature and origin of things, there is no Sin, 
 no Kedemption, no Eevelation, and we may as well 
 save the breath we spend in controversy on these 
 subjects. If the battle is to be fought out it must 
 be by prior conquests, as I have indicated, in the 
 regions of Cosmology and Psychology. It is no 
 use discussing questions of Theology till you 
 have a God, and you cannot settle the question 
 of a God by settling the question of organic Evo- 
 lution. 
 
 It is when we leave this higher ground and come 
 down to the less pretentious forms of Evolution 
 that we are in a position to discuss the possible 
 effect of prevailing views on our Biblical Theology. 
 It is organic Evolution, as held by theists, that 
 raises the controversy respecting certain points in 
 Theology. Assuming, then, that the no n-t\ieis>tio 
 view of unlimited Evolution is untenable, and that, 
 given the existence of a Supreme Being who takes 
 an interest in His intelligent creatures, there is a 
 Revelation of some kind contained in the Bible, 
 the real question before us is. What is the natural 
 and necessary effect of the theory of organic Evolu- 
 tion, supposing it to be true, upon the conceptions 
 we have hitherto been led to form concerning Sin 
 and Redemption from a study of the contents of 
 
152 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 Scripture ? The answers given to this question 
 are rather discordant. It has been assumed, on 
 the one hand, that necessarily Sin, in the theo- 
 logical and hitherto supposed Biblical sense, ceases 
 to be a reality, and as a consequence that Eedemp- 
 tion, as held by most Christians, is a fiction. On 
 the other hand, it has been maintained that, grant- 
 ing the truth of oro^anic Evolution, there results no 
 essential difference in the conceptions we are war- 
 ranted in forming of the teaching of Scripture 
 upon these tw^o important subjects. Between these 
 extremes there have been efforts to show how the 
 modern scientific doctrine of organic Evolution 
 qualifies our interpretation of the record as to the 
 origin of Sin in this world, and how, by its con- 
 firmation of a universal natural order, it suggests 
 that the Incarnation of the Son of God should be 
 regarded as an event more natural than it has 
 hitherto been supposed to be, but that otherwise 
 it does not affect the general theological position. 
 
 Now it is not possible to ascertain the truth in 
 this matter unless we first of all determine the 
 particular view of organic Evolution that is enter- 
 tained. It all depends on the place given to man 
 in the theory of Evolution as to what theological 
 consequences we are compelled to accept. There 
 are three possible positions for man in this respect, 
 
THE EEV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 153 
 
 and if we would treat tlie subject now in hand 
 with any degree of rigour, and so avoid tlie con- 
 fusion of thought which unfortunately is too pre- 
 valent, we must confine sole attention to them in 
 successive isolation. Man may be within the range 
 of organic Evolution, wholly, or partially, or not 
 at all. Let us take each of these views into 
 consideration in an order the reverse of that just 
 stated. 
 
 Take, then, the supposition that man is not in- 
 cluded within the scope of organic Evolution — 
 that he, being the head of all creatures, has been 
 directly, truly created, while all the rest have 
 evolved, according to a Divinely ordained law, 
 out of the simple primordial germ of life. That 
 this view is entertained by a few Evolutionists is 
 well known. They think that while there is strong 
 cumulative evidence in favour of Evolution up to 
 man, there is a striking failure in the evidence 
 adduced with respect to him. They, among other 
 consideration?, reason thus: — According to the 
 doctrine of Evolution by minute individual varia- 
 tion from specific forms, an immense number of 
 variations must occur through a long series of 
 generations before natural selection can ^k the 
 best of them into new species. The differences 
 in even mere physical development between the 
 
154 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 highest known species of the ape and the lowest 
 style of man are such as to imply the prior exist- 
 ence of countless hosts of intermediates ; while the 
 enormous difference of 28^ cubic inches of cranial 
 capacity suggests a still more remarkable succes- 
 sion of minute variations before a creature equal 
 to the highest known ape could pass into human 
 form. But while the very nature of the case 
 necessitates such a long succession of intermediate 
 forms, not one, either living or fossil, has ever been 
 found. Moreover, the very conception of natural 
 selection, or survival of the fittest, implies that in 
 the struggle for life some of the strongest would 
 be likely to survive ; whereas the fact is, that while 
 w^e have actually living the lower, inferior forms, 
 such as the orang and chimpanzee, there is no 
 trace of any of the superior anthropoids that must 
 have existed in considerable numbers had man 
 evolved by intermediate links from forms co-ordi- 
 nate with the orang and chimpanzee. Thus the 
 fittest to survive have perished, and the lowest 
 and weakest have survived. Now, doubtless, those 
 who hold by Evolution all along the line of life 
 may reply to this, that, great as the gap is, time 
 may help us to bridge it, especially seeing that 
 discoveries in tropical lands and strata are more 
 possible in the future than they have been in the 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 155 
 
 past. Still it is Dot reasonable to treat such 
 reasoning as though the men who employed it 
 were either fools or knaves, and the more so as it 
 was chiefly on this ground that Virchow ventured 
 to set his great authority against the attempt to 
 teach the Evolution of man in German schools as 
 a settled scientific fact. Ifc may be tbat those who 
 thus hold to the doctrine of the special creation of 
 man may have to face the awkward fact of super- 
 natural isolation as compared with the rest of the 
 organic world ; but they are in the habit of point- 
 ing to the origination of the ultimates of matter, 
 the first creation of life as distinguished from mole- 
 cular interaction and the Incarnation and Eesur- 
 rection of the Son of God, as instances of the same 
 kind of Divine action in unfolding the economy of 
 Providence. Their position may be ridiculous to 
 the man who denies the existence of a Free and 
 Almighty Will, or who formally admits such exist- 
 ence, but practically ignores it by holding to the 
 paradox that an Almighty and Free Will only can, 
 and does, act along necessary, unmodifiable lines ; 
 but to the candid, consistent theist, whether he 
 can accept it or not, the position will appear as, at 
 all events, perfectly reasonable. It will then be 
 obvious that those who thus see their way to 
 accept organic Evolution as coextensive in its 
 
156 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 range with all life except that of man can be con- 
 sistent Evolutionists and at the same time hold to 
 the entire content of Scripture as to Sin and Re- 
 demption, and also accept one or the other of those 
 theological formulations of these doctrines which 
 have hitherto prevailed among the different schools 
 of Christian thouorht. 
 
 o 
 
 Let us now take the supposition that man is in- 
 cluded within the scope of organic Evolution— only 
 not entirely; in other words, man as an animal is 
 evolved from lower forms. According to this view 
 it is the higher nature of man that is directly 
 created. The evidence in favour of the Evolution 
 of the bodily structure is taken as adequate, but 
 the moral and spiritual differentia of man is such 
 as to preclude the supposition that, as a responsible 
 being, he is only an outgrowth of brute intelligence. 
 The higher free nature of man is regarded as be- 
 longing essentially to a place above the natural. 
 Otherwise there would be a lack of logical con- 
 gruity in assigning the origin of one part of him to 
 the natural order, and another part to the super- 
 natural act of God. It is just here that questions 
 arise which lie outside the range of physical science ; 
 and it is on this account that those who count 
 physical considerations sufficient to solve the whole 
 problem of human life regard with disdain this 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 157 
 
 attempt to separate man, as a whole, from the 
 operation of the great organic law of Evolution. 
 Thus it is that the old Augustinian controversy of 
 Traducianism and Creationism has come to the 
 fore, divested of its well-worn theological form. 
 It is perfectly vain to expect the opposing parties 
 to come to terms. Dr. Matheson's well-meant 
 effort ^ to harmonise the supposed direct production 
 of the human spirit by the power of God with the 
 general principle of the Evolutionary theory falls 
 far short of the mark, for it is not a question of 
 the higher spiritual nature and the Evolutionary 
 process, by which the animal structure arose, hav- 
 ing a common source in the one Eternal Force, but 
 whether the Eternal Force formed the higher part 
 of man directly or by the same process as the rest. 
 The scientific man affirms that there is only one 
 method for the whole nature, and that to suppose 
 one part to be through a process and the other to 
 be direct is to introduce dualism in the order of 
 the universe. The diverse views are thus separated 
 by essentials. Their data are utterly different. It 
 is a question of the nature and place of the human 
 spirit in the universe. The naturalist may smile 
 at the attempt to settle the question by what he 
 calls a flight into the misty region of metaphysics ; 
 
 ^ Vide "Can tlie Old Faitli Live wiili the New?/' pp. 190-195. 
 
158 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 he may pride himself on the more simple matter- 
 of-fact method of physical science. On the other 
 hand, the spiritualist may pity what he would call 
 the narrow, one-sided, and inferior view of human 
 nature that sees in man nothing more than a 
 civilised brute; and he may well doubt whether 
 such easy, ready-handed solutions of the gravest of 
 problems are consistent with a sound philosophy. 
 
 Be this as it may, our present concern is not 
 with the validity or invalidity of the view taken, 
 but with the bearing of it, on the supposition of its 
 truth, upon the Biblical doctrines of Sin and Ee- 
 demption. The general effect of holding this view 
 of Evolution would be to leave theology untouched, 
 but yet to render necessary a modification of the 
 popular interpretation of the record of the origin of 
 man's structure and of the fall, and of the subse- 
 quent Apostolic reference to it. The fact of the 
 existence of Sin and of a Divine remedy for it in 
 no wise depends on our possession of any exact 
 literal historic record of the precise circumstances 
 under which it at first entered our world; nor 
 would our estimate of the nature of Sin and the 
 consequent nature of the Divine remedy be mate- 
 rially affected were the existing record to be in- 
 terpreted in a representative, or allegorical, rather 
 than in a strictly literal sense. The existence of 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 159 
 
 Sin is the sad basal fact of all human history ; its 
 essential nature is a matter not exclusively of 
 revelation, but of our inevitable moral intuitions ; 
 and the clear sense of our Lord's and of Apostolic 
 teaching is, apart from all question of their decid- 
 ing critical points, that Sin came into the world in 
 the first instance by the fault of primitive man. It 
 is, I think, quite possible, in view of the subsequent 
 Theophanies, with their necessary implication of 
 direct Divine intercourse with individual men, and 
 especially of the Incarnation and the evident tests 
 of the second Adam, to work out a rational and con- 
 sistent defence of a literal interpretation of the 
 narrative of the fall. At the same time, seeing 
 what a haze of mystery hangs over these primi- 
 tive records, those ought not to be regarded as 
 necessarily off the lines of reality who think that 
 the w^hole evidence available for the case points 
 to the conclusion that, with respect to the cir- 
 cumstances of the first appearance of Sin in the 
 world, Scripture sets before us a great fact in 
 representative colours, very much in the same 
 way as it does in the later books of the New 
 Testament the great realities of the future life. 
 
 We come now to the last alternative, namely, 
 that man in his entirety is included within the 
 scope of Evolution. According to this view man's 
 
160 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 entire nature — that which he has in common with 
 lower orders, and that which he is believed to 
 possess in advance of theirs — is the simple out- 
 come of an Evolutionary process, as truly, and in 
 the same sense, as the anthropoid ape is the out- 
 come of that process working upwards from the 
 lowest form of life. Man is interpretable by the 
 same methods as the ascidian and the lemur. 
 Philosophically speaking, he is a natural product. 
 There is no dispute as to the fact of man's quali- 
 ties being immensely superior to those of the 
 highest creature below him ; but it is strongly 
 maintained that, however high we may rate man's 
 spiritual powers, and with whatever dignities we 
 may invest him as a free moral being, all this is 
 explicable by the hypothesis of a slow and steady 
 progression from the sensible and emotional life 
 peculiar to the animal world. Moral choice and 
 obligation, the two terms which are supposed to 
 indicate a spiritual nature and a capacity for Sin 
 and for fellowship with God, are but designations 
 for the fact that in man, as we now know him, 
 there are the consolidated and registered experi- 
 ences of his long line of human and brute ancestry. 
 With what acuteness of reasoning this has been 
 attempted to be shown by Spencer, Darwin, and 
 Haeckel is well known. It would seem that those 
 
THE EEV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 161 
 
 who accept this view of human nature are quite 
 logical in their conclusions when they say that, 
 from the nature of the case, a fall such as we read 
 of in Scripture is out of the question ; that Sin, 
 with the connotations usual among theologians, is 
 a misnomer, and that a specific provision superin- 
 duced in the course of human history for the re- 
 moval of such sin and restoration to a lost purity 
 is not only foreign to the orderly course of Nature, 
 but a reading backwards of the page of Evolution, 
 which starts with the imperfect and passes on by 
 slow and steady progress to the more perfect. It 
 is not to be wondered at that, entertaining such 
 views of the nature of man, and the genesis of 
 moral choice, men should see in Evolution a theory 
 of the universe directly antagonistic to the Biblical 
 doctrines of Sin and Kedemption. They seek no 
 reconciliation because they conceive that their fun- 
 damental conceptions of the genesis of man admit 
 of no common data. 
 
 The fact is, that the real difficulty in the matter 
 of organic Evolution and Theology lies in the con- 
 ception we are bound to form of moral obligation, 
 if we can, indeed, form any at all, in case man be 
 simply a being evolved from the primordial form 
 of life. The question is started whether, on the 
 supposition of his being only the evolved product 
 
1G2 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 of bestial life, barring all supplementary action of 
 the Eternal, there can be such a thing as an eter- 
 nal moral obligation binding on man, and a moral 
 nature different in kind from anything possessed 
 by the superior animals. It has been most elabo- 
 rately argued that conscience and our sense of 
 moral obligation are only rather more refined and 
 developed forms of reference to tribal interests 
 than what still governs the actions of animals. 
 The swift intuitions of right and wrong are but 
 the result of registered experiences, and contain in 
 them no more essential element of eternal right 
 than may be found in the duty of an antelope to 
 warn the herd of approaching danger. The flip- 
 pant abuse of those who cannot accept Evolution 
 of the entire man, which we too often observe in 
 controversial writing, is no contribution to the 
 solution of the problem. There are manifestly 
 attributes ascribed to man in the Bible, respon- 
 sibilities imposed upon him, and lofty spiritual 
 privileges to which he is invited which prima 
 facie seem inexplicable if his origin be only what 
 some affirm. The chief authorities on Evolution, 
 Spencer, Darwin, and Haeckel, have shown extra- 
 ordinary acuteness in endeavouring to prove that 
 what is best in man is only the natural growth of 
 what is best in the brute ; and I think it will be 
 
163 
 
 admitted that they have found this a much more 
 onerous undertaking than the endeavour to connect 
 man's structure with lower forms. Those Chris- 
 tians who hold to the Evolution of the entire man 
 have taken on themselves the enormously heavy 
 burden of proving that the truly spiritual nature 
 of man, as represented in the Bible and known in 
 the most sacred and deep experiences of life, can 
 be, and is, an evolved product from mere animal 
 sensibility ; and that moral obligation, as involved 
 in the Biblical idea of sin, and known in man s 
 sense of accountability for his own internal condi- 
 tion as well as outward acts, can be, and is, CA^olved 
 from an antecedent condition of life, in which, by 
 hypothesis, there is not one iota of moral obliga- 
 tion. For, be it remembered, moral obligation is 
 not a refined utilitarianism ; it is sui generis. In- 
 deed, some of the most cogent arguments against 
 organic Evolution in its application to the entire 
 man, and, therefore, in favour of the special crea- 
 tion of the spirit of man as suggested by the pecu- 
 liarity of the narrative (Gen. i. 24, 26, 27, cf ii. 
 7), have been those founded on the nature of moral 
 obligation, and the consequent nature of the being 
 to whom it applies. I am not here arguing the 
 case one side or the other, but simply endeavour- 
 ing to point out the bearings of the diverse views ; 
 
164 EVOLUTION AXD SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 and I say that if the theory of the Evolution of 
 the entire man be true, then the Scripture doctrine 
 of Sin and its consequent Eedemption cannot be 
 held in the sense usually recognised in the Church 
 of all ages, unless it can be shown, first, that man's 
 higher nature can well have come from the nature 
 of the lower animals ; and, second, that moral obli- 
 gation can have gradually emerged out of mental 
 conditions in which not one iota of its real nature 
 is to be found. It will not do to tone down man's 
 nature as it is known in our profoundest expe- 
 rience, and as it is set forth in Scripture, and say 
 that it is simply a little in degree above the nature 
 of a dog as evinced in loving fidelity to his master ; 
 for spiritual discernment, capacity for God, the 
 awful prerogative of moral choice, ideas of the 
 Absolute, and recognition of an eternal right to 
 which we are for ever amenable seem to involve 
 radical differences in constitution. Mr. Spencer 
 has said, with respect to moral obligation : — " I be- 
 lieve that the experiences of utility, organised and 
 consolidated through past generations of the human 
 race, have been producing corresponding nervous 
 modifications, which, by continuous transmissions 
 and accumulations, have become in us certain 
 faculties of moral intuition, active emotions, cor- 
 responding to right or wrong conduct, which have 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 165 
 
 no apparent basis in the individual experiences of 
 utility." But Mr. Spencer ought to have seen 
 that, supposing this were the genesis of what we 
 call " faculties of moral intuition, active emotion," 
 we have not here the creation of a '' right and 
 a wrong" which is absolute and eternal. Their 
 having " no apparent basis in the individual ex- 
 periences of utility" now does not disprove that 
 they had only a basis in experiences of utility in past 
 generations of human and animal life ; and there is 
 nothing in the "nervous modifications" of ages, 
 which are purely physical changes with correspond- 
 ing sensibilities, that can convert experiences of 
 utility into an eternal and absolute moral obligation. 
 There are a few, though not conspicuous as theo- 
 logians so much as popular writers, who, entertain- 
 ing such a view of the origin of the spirit of man, 
 logically have abandoned the conceptions of Sin 
 and Eedemption formerly held, and, I may add, 
 necessary to any consistent interpretation of the 
 facts and statements recorded in Scripture. In 
 such a system Sin is a name for a constitutional 
 infirmity ; it is a venial failure in the subordina- 
 tion of the lower instincts to the higher; and as 
 such a failure is dependent entirely on the nervous 
 modifications of the structure, which again depend 
 on the environment, it is essentially the same in 
 
1G6 EVOLUTION AND SIN AND REDEMPTION. 
 
 its character as a failure to see clearly, to hear 
 correctly, and to walk firmly. In such a case 
 Kedemption can only mean an arrangement of the 
 social environment, by the action of which we may 
 hope to evolve into a state of more perfect mastery 
 of the animal passions. Any such thing as guilt, 
 in the true sense of the term, or of free moral 
 choice as a permanent reality in our nature, or of 
 real atonement, is inadmissible when the nature of 
 the theory held is thoroughly understood by those 
 professing to hold it. Nor can there be any bear- 
 ing of Sin and Eedemption on another life, seeing 
 that the existence of the entire man is due to a 
 physical process, and stands or falls, therefore, with 
 the structure. It will not do to appeal to Scrip- 
 ture, and say that we hold true ideas of guilt, of 
 moral choice, of atonement, and of a future life ; 
 because even Scripture cannot put into man's 
 nature what is, by reason of his declared genesis, 
 not a part of the man. On the other hand, the 
 most reasonable conclusion seems to be, that if 
 there is anything clearly taught in Scripture on 
 Sin and Kedemption inconsistent with a certain 
 view of the Evolution of the higher part of man s 
 nature, the probability is that there is a flaw some- 
 where in the proof of the Evolution of the entire 
 nature of man from lower bestial forms of life. 
 
IX. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLICAL 
 REPRESENTATIONS OF GOD, 
 
 By the Eev. Professor CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 
 
 THE time was when the knowledge and treatment 
 ^ of scientific and theological subjects were con- 
 fined to trained minds, and were discussed in terms 
 precisely understood by reader and writer. One 
 advantage of this was that, however much men 
 might difi*er in the conclusions arrived at, they were 
 ao-reed as to the essential points at issue. But it 
 has come to pass, by reason of the broader char- 
 acter of our modern literature, and the higher 
 average culture of the reading public, that the 
 most abstruse and difficult subjects that can engage 
 the human mind are now so set in popular form as 
 to deprive the terms employed of the rigid accuracy 
 of meaning which they once carried, and, indeed, 
 do now carry, with those who have the time and 
 capacity for a thorough mastery of the questions 
 involved. There is doubtless ultimate gain to the 
 
168 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 interests of truth in the circumstance that our 
 higher class popular literature, and sometimes even 
 the daily press, abounds with eloquent essays and 
 speeches on the origin of all things ; but mean- 
 while we suffer from the inconvenience of a con- 
 fusion of tongues, and greatly need to be reminded 
 that much writing on difficult themes is not a 
 guarantee for clear and cogent thinking. The most 
 conspicuous instance of this uncertainty of language 
 is, perhaps, to be found in the popular use of the 
 term ^' Evolution." For a thousand persons who 
 are prepared to talk glibly on Evolution, there are, 
 perhaps, not a dozen who can discriminate between 
 the various areas of fact over which the term may 
 be understood to range. To one accustomed to a 
 close and continuous study of the great problem of 
 existence, as it has been propounded and dealt with 
 from the earliest Hindoo systems, on through the 
 pre-Socratic Greeks up to the more modern scien- 
 tific developments of Kant's pregnant suggestion, 
 it is both amusing and painful to observe how much 
 energy is spent by writers and readers in discus- 
 sions which can bear no good fruit, for the sufficient 
 reason, that while there is much fervour of argu- 
 ment, it coexists with a blindness to the fact that 
 the idea entertained of Evolution may not be com- 
 mensurate with all the facts presupposed by the 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 160 
 
 idea of Theology. It is, for instance, often imagined 
 that what is called Darwinism is utterly at variance 
 with the first principles of Theology, whereas it 
 does not touch them. Darwinism has to do only 
 with the method of originating specific organic 
 forms. It leaves both the primary truths of Theo- 
 logy and the possibilities of a Eevelation untouched. 
 If, then, we are to say anything rational on the 
 relation of Evolution to Biblical Theology, it is 
 desirable to lay down some clearly defined sense 
 in which the term Evolution is here employed. 
 Although the literature on the subject is now vast, 
 yet we shall not be wrong in stating that all the 
 diverse views of Evolution may be classified under 
 two divisions — Restricted and Unlimited. The 
 Restricted would include all those expositions of 
 the facts of Organic Nature which seek to account 
 for the existence of all forms of life by a process of 
 difi'erentiation from the first simple germ. They 
 assume the existence of a primordial form of life, 
 and never profess to solve the question of what 
 order of things antedated its appearance on the 
 globe. Whether there be a God or not, whether 
 matter be eternal or not, whether all things ante- 
 cedent to the appearance of life, and also subse- 
 quent, have their root in one Reality or not, these 
 are great questions on which they are silent. They 
 
170 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 have no more to do with the ultimate causes of 
 things and the relation of the Eternal Power, or 
 Eternal God, or, if so it pleases, the Eternal series of 
 phenomenal changes, to the present order of things, 
 than has the gardener when he discourses to his 
 friend on the stages and means by which a pea passed 
 from its seed form to the developed pod. The most 
 Christian man on earth and the most thorough- 
 going Atheist may equally hold some such view of 
 Evolution without thereby sacrificing their respec- 
 tive creeds and notions. They have to do simply 
 with the bare facts of animal life. The Atheism of 
 Mr. Bradlaugh would not be established by such 
 a view of Organic Nature, nor would the Theism or 
 Christianity of the Archbishop of Canterbury be 
 weakened. The horror with wdiich some have re- 
 garded the theory of Organic Evolution, per se, is 
 an illustration of the fact that its actual bearing on 
 the most vital of all truths — the existence of a 
 Supreme Being and the gift of a Eevelation in 
 Christ — is not understood. Some have credited 
 it with a necessarily antichristian and even anti- 
 theistic basis, whereas, as a theory of life, construc- 
 tively or destructively, it has nothing to do with 
 either Christianity or Theism. In so far as the 
 originators of this theory postulate the first germ 
 of life to be created, they are by implication Theists, 
 
171 
 
 and the metliod by which they teach all other life 
 to have come from the first life is, considered in 
 itself, independent of any theological or anti-theo- 
 logical element — it is simply a statement of an 
 asserted order of facts in the organic world. 
 
 But while a distinguislied class of scientific 
 workers have only committed themselves to this 
 restricted view of Evolution, they difi"er among 
 themselves as to the precise law according to 
 which it takes place. Thus Darwin and Wallace 
 regard "Natural Selection" as the chief factor, 
 though the latter excludes the appearance of man 
 from its operation. On the other hand, St. George 
 Mivart thinks that " Natural Selection," even when 
 sustained by " Sexual Selection," is inadequate to 
 account for the actual facts revealed in the liistory 
 of life on the globe ; and he, therefore, prefers a 
 view which gives more room for the relatively 
 sudden appearance of specific forms. And althougli 
 Professor Owen, in the exercise of that caution 
 which is so characteristic of him, has not formu- 
 lated or worked out any counter theory, yet he, 
 in his Palaeontology, when taking a review of 
 the vast fossiliferous record, indicates his doubts 
 of the sufficiency of " Natural Selection," and 
 also suggests that probably the successive appear- 
 ance of graduated forms is to be ascribed to an 
 
1/2 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 *' ordained becoming " under the continuous opera- 
 tion of a secondary cause/ 
 
 But far more important in its bearing on Theo- 
 logy is that view of Evolution which I have de- 
 scribed as Unlimited. According to this the 
 principle of Evolution, without a break either in 
 time or space, is applied to the entire universe. 
 Of course the beginning of time is a metaphysi- 
 cal question, but if ever there was a beginning, 
 then the elementary undifferentiated condition of 
 things then existing has been subject, through 
 almost infinite ages, to an evolution by which 
 the primordial simplicity has issued in the ordered 
 universe we now behold. Or, if we take the alter- 
 native and say there never was a beginning in time, 
 then, with this eternal background, one of two 
 views is held : — the one, that from an eternal and 
 inconceivable simplicity, and by a marvellously 
 slow process, the present order of the universe has 
 come into existence ; the other, deeming such an 
 eternal simplicity a metaphysical absurdity, that 
 there has been an eternal series of cycles of evo- 
 lutions and dissolutions — changing simplicity into 
 complexity, and vice versa — in the midst of one 
 of which we happen to find ourselves. The essence 
 of this view is, that the universe, by a process very 
 
 ^ " Palaeontology," p. 3, cf. p. 403. 
 
TPIE EEV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 173 
 
 slow, came from a minimum of simplicity to its 
 present form. Starting almost from zero, things 
 have come to an almost infinite complexity. No 
 atom of matter, no point of space, no conceivable 
 existence, no idea or feeling in the past or present, 
 has been free from the action of this omnipresent 
 principle. There is no single gap in the rigid 
 retrocession of natural sequence and antecedence. 
 We may pass in thought step by step, as along a 
 well-ascertained road, from the most gifted human 
 genius back to the undifferentiated ultimates which 
 must be assumed to have been the sole form of 
 existence in the beginning ; and as we pass back 
 we find that each item is the evolved consequent 
 of a more simple antecedent and nothing more. 
 Both Natural Science and Logic demand conti- 
 nuity. While, however, this is that unlimited view 
 of Evolution which by the splendour of its scope 
 throws Darwinism into the shade, just as a whole 
 diminishes the importance of a part, it must not 
 be imagined that its advocates are agreed in its 
 representation. Indeed, a little reflection will 
 show how inextricably metaphysics are blended 
 with any attempt to explain the physical origin 
 of things, and how inevitable, therefore, it is that 
 the boasted certainty and clearness of Positivism 
 yield to uncertain and questionable speculations. 
 
174 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 There are two distinct schools of extreme evolu- 
 tionists, and we cannot deal satisfactorily with the 
 relations of Evolution to Theology unless we mark 
 these schools ofif one from the other and indicate 
 which of them we are more especially concerned 
 with. In the one school may be included all 
 who, like Haeckel, Biichner, Yoght, and Strauss, 
 postulate matter and mechanical force as consti- 
 tuting all that is ; who, in contravention of the 
 most assured law of molecular physics, even go 
 so far as to affirm that thought is the sole product 
 of molecular motion. In the other school must 
 be reckoned all who, following the teachings of 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer, hold that, at the base of 
 all phenomena, and as the causal explanation of 
 the facts of matter and mind, there lies an 
 Eternal Eeality — unknown and unknowable as to 
 its nature, but known in so far as it is the assured 
 source of all phenomenal existences. They hold to 
 One Eeality, of which matter and mind are the 
 two-faced manifestations. According to the former 
 school there is no Eternal Cause and no Mind except 
 in a crude materialistic sense ; according to the 
 latter an Eternal Cause is a primary datum, and 
 what we call Mind is a name for the series of states 
 which is one of the two forms in which the One 
 Eeality manifests itself, matter being the other. 
 
THE KEV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. l75 
 
 Mr. Spencer is not a Materialist, and his theory of 
 Evolution is not related to Theology in the same 
 way as is that of Haeckel and Buchner. 
 
 Yet it is obvious that each of these views of 
 Evolution stands in a more or less antagonistic 
 relation to the Biblical representation of God. The 
 theory held by the school of Haeckel clearly leaves 
 no place for the existence of a Supreme Being, any 
 more than for the existence of a real mind in man. 
 Bold Atheism is its God-ward, and hard Materialism 
 its man- ward, description. The only way of dealing 
 with it argumentatively is to begin on the human 
 side and show that, by making thought to be the 
 outcome solely of molecular motion in the brain, 
 you violate the law of the conservation of force ; 
 since, in such a case, force in motion, on becoming 
 thought, parts with a portion of itself, and so the 
 total amount of mechanical force is diminished — 
 contrary to the great scientific law ; while if, on 
 the other hand, it does not part with a portion of 
 itself, and yet gives rise to thought which is not 
 transformed molecular motion, you have the absur- 
 dity of force in form of molecular motion absolutely 
 creating a new thing entirely unlike itself. Having 
 thus wrested mind from materialism, we may next 
 ascend up the line of phenomena, and by the prin- 
 ciple of causality demand the existence of a real 
 
176 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 cause of the phenomenal order. Having done that, 
 we virtually come to the position held by Mr. 
 Spencer so far as concerns the existence of an 
 Eternal Keality. 
 
 As a consequence of the discussions of the past 
 few years on this subject, the air is cleared of much 
 that was murky and close. We see exactly where 
 we are. We know exactly what that form of the 
 unlimited Evolution theory is which has been most 
 philosophically elaborated, and which among men 
 who understand what they are about is regarded 
 as the system of thought that takes the most 
 reasonable position against Biblical ideas. I believe 
 that the whole of our modern controversies on 
 Evolution and Theology hinge on the position 
 taken by Mr. Spencer in reference to the One 
 Eeality and its relation to the twofold order of 
 phenomena — the mental and the material. If that 
 position is unassailable we may cease to write 
 books on Apologetics — the case is closed. Neither 
 the smartest epigrams nor the keenest logic will 
 give Theology a rational basis. It is a case in 
 which first principles are at stake. 
 
 Now, in considering this theory of Evolution in 
 its bearing upon the Biblical representations of God, 
 we ought carefully to note that we have nothing to 
 do with the fact, or with the degree, of the evolu- 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 177 
 
 tion of the solar and stellar systems from a primi- 
 tive condition of tliino^s in which matter existed in 
 simple form. There can be no objection to Cos- 
 mical Evolution, provided a beginning is postulated 
 that satisfies the reason. The Bible itself indicates 
 a process of change from elemental to more com- 
 plex forms. The extent over which the principle of 
 Evolution is to be applied — in other words, whether 
 there are any breaks in the chain of continuity — is 
 a question of detail, and involves for its decision a 
 consideration of ascertained facts. But that in the 
 Evolution theory which we have now more speci- 
 fically to deal with is what I may term its causal 
 element. In crude materialism there is, strictly 
 speaking, no causal element, for all is eternal phe- 
 nomena. The Lucretian "fortuitous concourse" 
 is only a phrase. There is no " cause " in the case. 
 "Chance" is not a power, but a name for a certain 
 irregular appearance of phenomena. It is indica- 
 tive only of our ignorance. But in Mr. Spencer's 
 system it is the causal element, which he makes so 
 prominent, that alone bears on the Biblical doctrine 
 of God. He virtually makes it a substitute for 
 what theists hold to be the sole explanation of the 
 facts of the universe. Reduced to a brief formula, 
 the real question at issue is the ascertainable char- 
 acteristics of the primal cause. 
 
178 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 Let US, then, notice what there is in common 
 between the One Eeality, which is the causal 
 element in the theory of unlimited evolution, and 
 the Biblical account of God. Both in the ''First 
 Principles'' and in the ''Psychology'' the position 
 taken is that beneath, and as the ground of all that 
 is knowable, there is One Eeality, of which, in the 
 truest sense, existence may be predicated. Though 
 less abstract than the to ov of the pre-Socratic 
 Greeks, the One Eeality is substantially the subject 
 of their thought. The terms employed to indicate 
 it are varied, and critics may find occasion for the 
 exercise of their skill in the One Eeality being 
 also described as the Unknowable, the Absolute, 
 the Ultimate and Unknown Cause, the Eternal 
 Power, Absolute Being, Force, the Inscrutable. 
 But no gain to truth can arise from quibbles over 
 words. No impartial student of Mr. Spencer's 
 works can fail to see that, apart from fit or unfit 
 terms, he is not dealing with a phantom of the 
 brain or a bare abstraction of thought, but with 
 the fact of a real existence — an actual base and 
 ground of all phenomena. And it is just here that 
 we find a remarkable correspondence between his 
 teaching and that of the Bible. Assuming for the 
 present the term " God " to be non-connotative of 
 Personality, it is obvious that the sacred writers 
 
THE REV. rP.OF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 179 
 
 were, when using it, thinking of exactly the same 
 thing as Mr. Spencer. Throughout the Bible God 
 is represented as the real, permanent ground of all 
 other existences or modes of being. Job could 
 easily have adopted the term " the Inscrutable " to 
 indicate his idea of the unsearcliableness of the 
 mysterious source of all things. The thought 
 running through the Bible is Avell expressed by 
 such words as *' Of him and through him are all 
 things." All else is conceived as transitory, de- 
 pendent, mere appearance — "vanity." We owe a 
 debt of gratitude to Mr. Spencer for the persistence 
 with which he has vindicated, against Positivist 
 and sceptical schools of thought, the fundamental 
 principle of Biblical Theology, namely, that an 
 Eternal One is. Whatever differences on other 
 subordinate views may still separate him from us, 
 I am persuaded that the deep conviction enter- 
 tained of the existence of One Eternal Reality, and 
 the reverence naturally begotten by that convic- 
 tion, afford a reasonable ground for the hope that, 
 in due time, the reconciliation of Theology and 
 Science will be attained. 
 
 Not only is there a fundamental agreement in 
 holding to the truth of One Eternal Reality, but 
 there is the farther agreement which consists in the 
 fact that both regard the One Reality as an operat- 
 
180 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 ing cause. With Mr. Spencer the One Keality is 
 much more than the logical completion of an order 
 of thought in the retrogressive line — more, that is 
 to say, than an ideal origin of a series of events. 
 It is an actual cause — "an actuality lying beyond 
 appearances" — of all that is and has been in the 
 history of the universe. Aristotle could not have 
 surpassed the matter-of-fact way in which the 
 Eeality is variously set forth as the source and 
 explanation of all phenomena. The Eternal Power 
 works, and its energy is the rational account of all 
 changes. Now, although the Bible does not employ 
 the term " cause " in the philosophic sense, it never- 
 theless represents the relation of God to the universe 
 in substantially the same way. No reasonable 
 doubt can be thrown on the belief that ^*7^, hara, 
 as applied to the beginning, means to create, though 
 there is no need to add the inaccurate expression, 
 " out of nothing." But apart from etymology, it 
 is evident that the whole drift of the representation 
 of God's relation to things is that of Originator or 
 Cause. The conception of a prior Power is utterly 
 alien to the entire teaching of the Old and New 
 Testaments. "Without him nothing became that 
 did become." 
 
 Further, this Sole Cause, this Eternal Eeality, is, 
 according to our modern authority, both transcen- 
 
THE REV. TROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 181 
 
 dent and immanent. It is distinguished in fact 
 and in thought from the ceaseless flow of pheno- 
 mena that owe their existence to it. It lies beneath 
 and beyond all we see and feel and hear and think. 
 Where they are it is, but is not included in them. 
 It is transcendent. Likewise it is in all pheno- 
 mena. What we see and feel and hear and. think 
 are simply manifestations ; they have no reality, no 
 power of self-existence or of continuance. Apart 
 from the continued action of the Power which 
 orio-inated them, they would vanish as surely as 
 that the shadow vanishes when the sun and the 
 object disappear. The history of philosophy shows 
 how frequently ideas recur under new forms, and 
 in this immanence of the One Power giving relative 
 persistence to phenomena we cannot fail to see 
 essentially what is known as the Cartesian "con- 
 tinued creation." All that is is the expression of 
 a Power, and things are but the forms of that 
 Power. In so far as they abide before conscious- 
 ness, they abide by virtue of the persistent action 
 in the same form of the Power. In so far as 
 phenomena are not independent, but are forms of 
 the Power, the One Reality is immanent in pheno- 
 mena. Here, again, we have in other phrase essen- 
 tially the Biblical idea of God. Everywhere in the 
 Bible the appearances which we now call Nature 
 
182 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 are conceived as having in themselves no inherent 
 capacity of continued existence. They are simply 
 forms of the Eternal Power. God is the pervasive 
 energy : '' In Him all things consist." All things 
 are upheld " by the word of His power." By Him 
 the " mountains stand fast." So close is the con- 
 nection of the Eternal Power with things that God 
 is said to be ''in the storm/' and to ''ride on the 
 wings of the wind/' and even to do the things 
 which we in ordinary language refer to the action 
 of natural laws. It has been a charge against Old 
 Testament writers that they frequently ignore the 
 operation of natural law, and conceive of God as 
 constantly performing miracles. But the fact is, 
 that when they speak of God "sending hail and 
 frost," and of " watering the earth/' they are as far 
 from thinking, after the example of the savage, of 
 the arbitrary action of a Being outside the order of 
 things as is Mr. Spencer ; they are only using bold 
 language to set forth their idea of the presence and 
 action everywhere and in everything of the Eternal 
 Power. They believed in the immanence in Nature 
 of the only Efficient Cause. 
 
 Thus far we have seen agreement between the 
 causal element in Evolution and the fundamental 
 Biblical representation of God. "We have now to 
 look at the point of divergence. One sentence 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 183 
 
 may express the point at issue : — The predicates 
 aflfirmed in Scripture of the One Reality, under 
 the name God, are withheld by the evolutionist, 
 with the necessary exception of those which imply 
 power, presence, and duration. It is not for me 
 to justify the term "unknowable," when one can 
 speak of it as power, omni23resent and eternal. 
 Mr. Spencer's negation, however, of intelligence 
 and will raises the question as to what the One 
 Reality is, if not these. He persuades himself 
 that he is meeting all the facts of the case, and is 
 conforming to the necessities of thought by simply 
 saying that of the nature of the One Reality we 
 know nothing, and cannot know anything. It is 
 presumption to say what it is. One would like 
 more consistency between the form of denial 
 and the actual arguments employed. For in the 
 "First Principles" it is said of the Reality, we 
 can "neither affirm nor deny Personality,"^ and 
 also that it may be as far above " intelligence 
 and will as these transcend mechanical motion ; " ^ 
 and yet the whole drift of his argument, in all 
 his works, is to "deny" that Personality can be 
 affirmed, and it is in this fact of denial, sustained 
 by elaborate reasoning, that we find a repudiation 
 of Biblical ideas. The argument developed with 
 
 1 Page 1 08. 2 Page 109. 
 
184 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 much force in his various works seeks to make out 
 that it is absurd to suppose, as is taught in the 
 Bible, that the One Inscrutable Eeality can be 
 Mind or Personality. The term Personality is not 
 the best, perhaps, that can be used for the pur- 
 poses of such a discussion, because of its mislead- 
 ing connotations ; but the question before us really 
 resolves itself into two elements, which may be 
 considered separately, namely, one of nature and 
 one of act. In various ways the Bible declares 
 what God is, and what God does. He is a Free 
 Mind and He creates. The extreme Evolutionist 
 denies that either of these can be predicated of 
 the One Eeality. What is the ground of this 
 denial, and what its validity ? 
 
 The ground ^ of the denial that the One Reality 
 is Free Mind may be put thus : Mind, as we know 
 it, is purely phenomenal ; it is as truly pheno- 
 menal as are colour and form and hardness. Mind 
 is simply the name we give to the sum of serial 
 states which make up human experience. It is as 
 transitory as the sum of material qualities which 
 make up the volume of a river. The different 
 items in the mental series are but " manifesta- 
 tions " of the Inscrutable Reality in the same sense 
 
 1 I have put into as brief form as possible the reasoning running 
 through all Mr. Spencer's works. 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 185 
 
 as are the different items in the physical series. It 
 is therefore irrational to suppose that the Reality 
 itself, of which they are but ''manifestations," can 
 be the same as they are. Such a conception, were 
 it possible, would involve the annihilation of the 
 distinction of Reality and phenomena. Mind im- 
 plies change, imperfection, progress, and acts that 
 are restricted by conditions. Moreover, as mind 
 consists in a series of conscious states, and is never 
 complete as long as the series is flowing on, to 
 suppose the Reality to be Mind would be to make 
 the Absolute finite, and would, in fact, ascribe to 
 the Eternal all the limitations involved in the 
 nature of intelliirence and wilL We micrht think 
 of God as a variable, conditioned being, but never 
 as the One Eternal Reality demanded by the 
 primary data of consciousness. Intelligence and 
 will involve a denial of the Absolute ; they are 
 inconsistent with our necessary conception of the 
 undifferentiated ground of all phenomena. 
 
 The ground of the denial that the One Reality 
 is a Creator may be briefly expressed thus : Crea- 
 tion is inconceivable. We have no warrant for 
 believing what our mental constitution does not 
 afford us the faculty for thinking. All our know- 
 ledge is phenomenal, and therefore we are not 
 furnished with the elements which must enter into 
 
1S6 z- i-n 
 
 1>1T. 
 
 
 \r 
 
 -utit^. s ^ 
 
THE KEY. PKOF. CHAKLES CHAFMAX. M.A. 1S7 
 
 tivelv. mind i? only a name given by ns to denote 
 the sum of a succession of vivid and faint states 
 wliicli become variously difterentiated and integ- 
 rated as the orcrauism of the brain becomes more 
 elaborated. This, at first, might seem to be a 
 revival of the Hux of Heraclitus and the ontologi- 
 eal scepticism of Hume. But no ! Mr Spencer 
 claims the existence of a Reality, a Power which 
 accounts for the existence o^ this series, only it is 
 nor the finite reality commonly regarded as the 
 seat and base of the mental facts, but the One 
 Eternal Eeality, the Inscrutable Power, which 
 stands equally related to the mental and the 
 material phenomena. Mind, then, exists only as 
 a fieetincr series of differentiated "feelings," which 
 have no other origin or base than that which is 
 also the base of the varied changes of the material 
 world. Feelings and motions alike are as bubbles 
 rising out of the Inscrutable, and ceasing to be as 
 soon as they come forth, giving place to an end- 
 less succession of the same transitory appearances. 
 Now, of course, if this be a true account of mind, 
 the One Reality cannot be mind. A child might 
 see that a set of lungs and a tobacco pipe cannot 
 be bubbles. It would carry me iiw into detail were 
 I to argue out this question of the nature, or, as 
 Spencer is pleased to call it, '* Composition of 
 
188 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 Mind." But I shall content myself with saying 
 that until he has established his theory of mind 
 on an impregnable basis, the whole of his argu- 
 ment against the attribution of mind to God is 
 worthless. I may here add that it is beyond 
 human ingenuity to show how, on the hypothesis 
 of all we know being fleeting states of conscious- 
 ness, it is possible to arrive at the knowledge of 
 a Eeality at all, be it scrutable or inscrutable. 
 There is really no escape from Hume's untenable 
 position, which Spencer seems to regard with horror, 
 unless you accept the reverse doctrine that " mind " 
 is a permanent being, and -if so, the Eternal 
 Eeality may certainly be Eternal Mind. The suc- 
 cession of states of consciousness, in that case, is 
 quite compatible with essential unchangeableness 
 in the One Eeality. The Living God is everlast- 
 ing, though, in time, He is conscious of all the 
 acts of intelligence and volition. Some persons 
 are perhaps surprised at the zeal with which Mr. 
 Spencer elaborates his theory of mind in relation 
 to his theory of the One Eeality which is not 
 mind, but a close acquaintance with his philosophy 
 as a whole will dissipate the wonder. It is made 
 an essential part of his theory of Evolution, accofd- 
 ing: to which the twofold *' manifestations," mental 
 and material, are but two faces, two everlasting ex- 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 189 
 
 pressions, in an ordered way, of the One Inscrutable 
 Power. But the clue to the zeal is doubtless to be 
 found in the clear perception which he has that, 
 when once you concede that what we call mind in 
 man is a reality capable of continued existence in 
 conscious modes, you have given a rational basis 
 for the Biblical representations of God as an Eternal 
 Keality, whose essential nature is Mind ; and if I 
 might offer a suggestion to our army of apologists, 
 I would say, by all means make the psychological 
 position your stronghold. 
 
 The importance which Mr. Spencer attaches to 
 the question of mind, as a permanent reality, is 
 seen in the vigorous logic by which he endeavours 
 to show tliat we cannot possibly know any such 
 thing. ^ "We know only conscious states. To say 
 that we know anything which is not a conscious 
 state is practically nonsense. I have not space 
 here to point out the fallacy of this reasoning as 
 applied to mind, but just call attention to the fact 
 that the reasoning itself cuts at the root of the 
 entire fabric of knowledge which, in elaborating 
 his theory of Evolution, he has reared. For if his 
 argument is true against the permanent reality of 
 mind, as distinguished from a series of fleeting 
 conscious states, it is a fortiori true against his 
 
 1 " Psycliulogy," vol. i. pp. 145-162. 
 
190 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 own belief in the existence of an Eternal Inscrut- 
 able Keality, which is neither a set of states nor a 
 set of material qualities, but the common base or 
 ground of them all. If my states of consciousness 
 cannot certify me of a root or base which I call a 
 permanent finite reality in which they inhere, how 
 can they possibly certify me of a reality which is 
 in relation to them, and, also, to what is not one of 
 my conscious states ? The pressure of this ques- 
 tion on Mr. Spencer s logical conscience seems to 
 be very heavy, for in his " First Principles " he 
 even speaks of that " vague consciousness of Ab- 
 solute Being " which no mental effort can suppress. 
 It is obvious that this does not improve matters, 
 for how is it possible to say that, in a bare series 
 of states, there is a ''vague consciousness" of 
 Absolute Being — of that which, by hypothesis, is 
 the base and source of all mental states, and, in- 
 deed, of all phenomena— and yet to say that we 
 cannot believe in a something, a real finite being, 
 as the base of our mental states, because, forsooth, 
 knowledge consists in mental states? If know- 
 ledge cannot transcend these states so that we may 
 know of the existence of a mind which is some- 
 thing more than— i.e., a ground of the — bare 
 states, how can it transcend them so as to give 
 us the knowledf^e of an infinite inscrutable ground 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 191 
 
 of them ? It seems to me that the condition of 
 knowledge laid down to prevent belief in mind as 
 a permanent reality, expressing itself in states or 
 modes, equally prevents belief in any permanent 
 Eeality ; and if the existence of states of conscious- 
 ness is compatible with belief in an Inscrutable 
 Absolute Being, it follows that it is compatible 
 with belief in mind as a permanent reality ; for 
 the principle involved is the same in both cases. 
 The result is, that inasmuch as the objection to the 
 Biblical representation of God proceeds on the sup- 
 position that mind in man is, and can only be, 
 a bare series of states, the objection falls to the 
 ground when it is thus shown that the very system 
 that seeks to prove it to be such is, thereby, ren- 
 dered impossible; while, on the other hand, the 
 evidence afforded by the system of the existence of 
 an Absolute Being as the base of 2)heuomena is also 
 available for the proof of the existence of mind as 
 a permanent base of conscious states. There is, 
 then, philosophic truth in the Biblical account of 
 the One Keality as Mind. 
 
 Apart from the psychological question, there is, 
 also, an element from the transcendental philo- 
 sophy of Germany which seems to render the Bibli- 
 cal representation of God displeasing to the extreme 
 Evolutionist. The idea is, that the Absolute Being 
 
192 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 would cease to be Absolute were we to conceive It 
 or Him as Intelligence and "Will, since the acts 
 involved in these are inconsistent with the idea of 
 Absoluteness. Thought and will imply a discrimi- 
 nated, a conditioned, mode of being. Now it might 
 be enough to adduce an antinomy, and show that 
 unless the Absolute can think and act it is not 
 Absolute, but under limitations. But leaving bare 
 logic, let me take the case of the Absolute Being, 
 which, according to Mr. Spencer, is the ground of 
 all phenomena. The incessant phenomena of matter 
 and mind are said to be " manifestations " of the 
 Absolute Being or Inscrutable Eeality. These 
 '* manifestations " are the outcome of power ; they 
 imply that the Absolute acts in a certain way ; 
 they are definite modes along which the Power 
 moves. Such being the case, there is as real a 
 destruction of the Absolute as in the supposed 
 case of the Biblical representation of God. The 
 action of God is as consistent with the existence 
 of the Absolute as is the action of the Inscrutable 
 Power with the existence of Mr. Spencer's Absolute 
 Being. 
 
 Space forbids my entering further into the argu- 
 ment so far as relates to God being Mind. A word 
 or two must be said on the Biblical representation 
 of God as Creator. 
 
THE EEV. PKOF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 193 
 
 As to creation being conceivable, I tliiuk people 
 familiar with the controversy know pretty well 
 how this word " conceivable " has been discussed. 
 In the sense of framing an image — Vorstellung — 
 no one supposes creation is conceivable. Perhaps 
 those who object to creation in this sense will tell 
 us whether they can so conceive of Absolute Being. 
 We know what must be their reply ; and yet they 
 believe most assuredly in the fact that there was 
 and is an Absolute Being. Doubtless there have 
 been absurd representations of creation, among 
 which I cannot but include that which embraces 
 the expression " out of nothing ; " at the same 
 time it is not possible to apply the principle 
 of causality rigorously to the finite, phenomenal 
 forms, w^hich make up the present universe, with- 
 out being brought intellectually face to face with 
 the ultimate fact that they owe their existence to 
 a First Cause, i.e., that they, as phenomena, were 
 orio;iiiated. 
 
 It is, then, a pure question of thought, and not 
 of representation or conception. But passing by 
 that, I would take the alternative case proposed by 
 Mr. Spencer. lie thinks it an improvement on 
 the Biblical account to speak of the phenomena 
 which make up the world as being " manifesta- 
 tions " of the One Ecality. Now let us apply his 
 
 N 
 
194 EVOLUTION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 own criterion, and ask whether he can conceive an 
 Inscrutable Eeality causing something to arise 
 which is not the Eeality itself, i.e., " manifesta- 
 tion " ? Can he form an image of the act 1 Morcr 
 over, if there be any validity in the distinction 
 between " Eeality " and '' Manifestation," there is 
 never a time when the Eeality is not, but there is 
 a time when the " Manifestation " is not ; so that 
 the " Manifestation," i.e., something which is not 
 the Eeality, comes into existence. It may be tem- 
 porary existence, but still it is new existence, and 
 existence of that which is not Eeality. That which 
 explains the fact is the wondrous power of the 
 Inscrutable Eeality. Now, just change the term 
 and say, instead of " manifestation," " created 
 thing," and yon have essentially the doctrine of 
 creation. For according to the Bible the world 
 is a manifestation of the power of the Eternal 
 God.-^ Things were made by the Woed of God. 
 They are the expression of His Beiug. My 
 thoughts are the manifestation of my mind-power : 
 they are creations : they may presuppose, accord- 
 ing to a certain psychology, sensations as their 
 crude form, but as thoughts they are new things — 
 they are the outcome of an Invisible Eeality which, 
 as such, is distinguishable from themselves. And 
 
 ^ Kom. i. 19, 20. 
 
THE REV. PROF. CHARLES CHAPMAN, M.A. 195 
 
 thus, even out of our own experience, we may get 
 an analogy to throw some light on the most remote 
 and inaccessible of all problems — the creation of 
 the world by God. No one who considers what is 
 implied in the temporal relation of phenomena, or 
 " manifestations," to the One Eeality, can have 
 much to say in way of objection to the Scripture 
 doctrine of creation by God. 
 
 In conclusion,^ then, I say that in so far as there 
 is ascertained truth in the causal element of Evolu- 
 tion, it is a justification of the root idea in the Bibli- 
 cal representations of God, and in so far as the 
 causal element is said to be at variance with the 
 Biblical representation, the account given of it is 
 dependent on a theory of Mind w^hich will not 
 bear examination, while, on the other Land, the 
 Biblical account harmonises with the most rational 
 psychology. 
 
 1 It could also l)e shown that the mystery of the " Inscrutable " 
 affords a natural basis for the mystery of the revealed doctrine of 
 the Trinity. 
 
EVOLUTION AND MAN'S FACULTY OF 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 By JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, Esq. 
 
 T CANNOT agree with tlie sentence with which 
 Professor Momerie has begun his able and elo- 
 quent essay ("Evolution and Design") in this series: 
 — " The theory of Evolution leaves one half of the 
 universe completely unaccounted for, namely, the 
 mental half." It is quite true that Evolution does 
 not account for the existence of mind ; but neither 
 does it account for the existence of anything what- 
 ever. To use a distinction which must be as old 
 as logical philosophy, and which has been popu- 
 larised by that clear but not very profound thinker, 
 Charles Kingsley, the theory of Evolution teaches 
 nothing about the why of things, but only about 
 the how. It teaches that things have come to be 
 what they are, not by a single creative act, but by 
 a gradual process, proceeding from indefiniteness to 
 definiteness, and from simplicity to complexity. 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 197 
 
 But this is only a summary of results, not a state- 
 ment of their causes. It requires to be itself 
 accounted for, by referring it to more elemen- 
 tary laws. Nevertheless, the law of Evolution is 
 generally true, and mind is no exception to it. 
 Sensation is the germ out of w^hich mind has 
 been evolved. 
 
 But how has sensation itself been evolved? 
 This is a fundamental mystery, on which no ob- 
 servation or experiment or reasoning can con- 
 ceivably throw any light. Professor Momerie 
 quotes Tyndall as saying that the connection be- 
 tween thought and molecular action in the brain 
 is ''unthinkable," or, in commoner English, unin- 
 telligible ; not only unknown, but impossible to 
 be known. This is quite true ; but if it is asserted 
 of thought or mind only, it is misleading. The 
 ultimate mystery is not the perfected evolution of 
 mind, with its self-conscious thought and will — 
 the ultimate mystery is the first origin of sensa- 
 tion. Given the fact that living tissue becomes 
 sentient, the development of the sentient or 
 nervous tissue into a brain, and of sensation into 
 thought, are mysterious only as all vital develop- 
 ment is mysterious ; but to quote Tyndall's passage 
 on this subject, with the change of a few w^ords 
 which I mark in italics : — " The passage from the 
 
198 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 physics of the nerves to the corresponding facts of 
 sensation is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 
 sensation and a definite molecular action in the 
 nerves occur simultaneously, we do not possess the 
 intellectual organ, nor apparently the rudiments 
 of such an organ, which would enable us to pass, 
 by a process of reasoning, from the one to the 
 other. They appear together, but we do not 
 know why." 
 
 We must here turn aside from the natural course 
 of the argument, to meet an objection which will 
 be felt by many. If Mind is a development of 
 sensation, and if Thought depends for its existence 
 on currents in the nerves of the brain, what be- 
 comes of the distinctness of the mind, or soul, 
 from the body ? and if it is not distinct, how can 
 it be immortal ? 
 
 I reply, that if the belief in immortality de- 
 pended on any metaphysical or quasi-physical 
 theory of the distinctness of the soul, it would 
 have to be abandoned. But this is not the case.^ 
 The truth, as I believe it to be, which Christ and 
 His Apostles have taught, is not that the soul is 
 naturally immortal, but that immortality it to be 
 ^conferred upon it — that God ivill raise the dead} 
 Science can do nothing to refute this, and not 
 
 1 See Jolin v. 24, 29 ; and Acts xxvi. 8. 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 199 
 
 much to confirm it ; but the analogies of Nature, 
 so far as the case admits of any, are rather in its 
 favour. Evolutionists often say that no change in 
 Nature is abrupt, and that whatever comes into 
 being is only a development from something which 
 existed before. But though this is generally true, 
 it appears to present one exception of vast import- 
 ance and significance, namely, the origin of organic 
 life. Though the origin of sensation is absolutely 
 inscrutable, yet the critical turning-point in the 
 history of creation was not the origin of sensation, 
 but the origin of organic life. All observation and 
 experiment are in favour of the belief that the pro- 
 perties of living beings are not resultants from 
 those of matter, but have been superinduced on 
 matter ; and this must have been done by an exer- 
 tion of the same Creative Power which at the first 
 called matter into being. It is true that Tyndall 
 has so firm a belief in the " continuity of Nature " 
 that he discerns in matter " the promise and 
 potency of all terrestrial life," including the men- 
 tal and spiritual life of Man; but this he does 
 admittedly without evidence, and only in obedience 
 to an imaginary necessity of the intellect. It seems 
 to me that Professor Clifford, in maintaining that 
 " mind-stuff," or the material out of which mind is 
 evolved, exists in every separate atom of matter, 
 
200 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 has only pushed Tyndall's view to its legitimate 
 and necessary reductio ad ahsurdum. 
 
 We maintain that the same Creative Power 
 which at the first called matter into being, and 
 afterwards conferred life upon it, is able to give 
 life to the dead. But " how are the dead raised 
 up, and with what body do they come ? '' To this 
 question we can give only St. Paul's answer, that 
 our knowledge is no measure of the possibilities of 
 creation and the resources of the Creator ; and we 
 can only repeat his formula of Evolution, which is 
 true for the entire process of creation — " That was 
 not first which is spiritual, but that which is natu- 
 ral ; and afterward, that which is spiritual." It is 
 true that by the word which we translate by natu- 
 ral St. Paul meant only belonging to the natural 
 life ; he was not thinking of un vitalised matter ; 
 but it is doing no violence to his teaching if we 
 read into it a meaning kindred with his own, but 
 wider ; and if we complete his meaning by saying 
 that mere matter was first ; then natural or organic 
 life, attaining its highest development in the brain 
 of man ; and finally spiritual and immortal life — 
 the life and immortality which has been brought 
 to light by Christ.^ The spiritual world appears 
 to be related to the visible, and spiritual life to 
 
 1 2 Tim. i. lo. 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 201 
 
 organic and merely mental life, very much as 
 organic and mental life to the agencies of the inor- 
 ganic world. 
 
 I have so far been arguing only that the spiritual 
 faith which Christianity demands is in no way en- 
 dangered by the doctrine of Evolution. I have 
 now to show how, in my view, the evolutionary 
 conception of mind is a better and safer basis for such 
 a faith than the old metaphysical conceptions can be. 
 
 By the metaphysical conception of Mind I mean 
 the doctrine that mind and matter are absolutely 
 distinct and unlike, though in our present state of 
 being they are united and act on each other. To 
 this conception belongs the belief in the natural 
 immortality of the soul — the belief that the mind, 
 or soul, does not die with the body, but is liberated 
 by its death. 
 
 This conception of the nature of Mind was, of 
 course, always confronted with the difficulty of 
 understanding how the mind and the body, being 
 supposed to belong to totally distinct and unlike 
 orders of being, could act on each other at all. 
 This, however, was accepted as a fact, impossible 
 to deny, but altogether mysterious ; and, of course, 
 it is true that the mystcriousness of a fact is no 
 reason for denying it. There is a mystery at the 
 OTound of all being whatever. 
 
202 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 But there are other questions which the meta- 
 physical theory of Mind, so far from solving, is 
 scarcely able to state. What is the mental nature 
 of animals, and how is it related to their bodily 
 life 1 "What is the relation of mind to bodily sen- 
 sation ? And how is mind related to the evolution 
 of the body ? For though the evolution of species 
 is a modern discovery, the evolution of the indi- 
 vidual has been always known/ This last question 
 has been answered in a strangely arbitrary way by 
 some theologians, who have maintained that the 
 soul of every man who is born into the world owes 
 its existence to a separate act of Creative Power ; 
 — a theory which can be neither proved nor dis- 
 proved, but is contrary to all the analogies of 
 nature. It is not possible that such questions 
 should be so answered as to clear away all the 
 mystery which surrounds them ; but this is true 
 of the most fundamental questions in every branch 
 of science ; and the evolutionary theory of Mind, 
 if it cannot solve such questions, is at least able to 
 state them accurately, to place them in their rela- 
 tion to each other, and to show where the mystery 
 lies. It is obviously impossible to pursue this sub- 
 ject into its details within the limits of an essay 
 like the present, but my general drift is indicated 
 
 1 See Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16 ; and Eccles. xi. 5. 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 203 
 
 by the remark already made, that the initial and 
 fundamental mystery is the fact of organic tissue 
 becoming sentient ; and this mystery is in no de- 
 gree diminished by the fact that the beginning of 
 sensation appears to be gradual, so that there is no 
 sharp separation between sentient and insentient 
 life, like that between life and the forces of inor- 
 ganic matter. 
 
 The chief problem of philosophy — of the scien- 
 tia scientiarum, as distinguished from particular 
 sciences — is the nature, conditions, and limits of 
 knowledge. At an early period the doctrine that 
 knowledge comes through the perceptions was for- 
 mulised in the well-known saying, " There is nothing 
 in the intellect but what was previously in the 
 sense." But this, even if true, was obviously an 
 incomplete statement ; and Leibnitz modified it 
 thus — " There is nothing in the intellect but what 
 was previously in the sense, except the intellect 
 itself" This addition to the old axiom is so 
 self evident that it may appear scarcely worth 
 making ; but how much does it include ? It raises 
 the entire question of the mutual relation of the 
 two factors of our knowledge, namely, the impres- 
 sions which come through the organs of sense, and 
 the intellect, on which the impressions are made. 
 This is a vast subject, and it is perhaps not too 
 
204 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 much to say tliat all philosophical work since the 
 time of Leibnitz has been occupied in threshing it 
 out. The chief purpose of the present essay is to 
 show that the doctrine of Evolution throws upon it 
 a valuable and most satisfactory light. 
 
 The philosophy of Kant, which its author rightly 
 named the Critical Philosophy, is in the first place 
 occupied with this problem ; and its result is 
 briefly this: — The matter, or material, of know- 
 ledge is contributed by the senses, and the form 
 by the mind itself. There are forms of thought 
 (or rather of intuition), especially time, space, and 
 causation (or the relation of cause and efiect), which 
 belong to the structure of the mind, and constitute 
 moulds, as it were, wherein the material furnished 
 by sensation is cast into form ; — or, to use a difier- 
 ent and more instructive illustration, the forms of 
 thought are related to the impressions of sense, 
 somewhat as the formative agency which builds up 
 the organism is related to the materials which come 
 into it in its food. 
 
 The distinctness of these forms of thought, at 
 least those of space and time, from mere impres- 
 sions of sense, is shown by the fact that we per- 
 ceive them to be universal and necessary. It is 
 true that all objects are presented in space, and 
 all events occur in time ; but if we imagine all 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 205 
 
 objects to be absent, space will still remain ; and if 
 we imagine all events to be absent, time will still 
 remain. 
 
 It is a mere statement of fact to say that these 
 are forms of thought ; but the question remains 
 for solution, What is their relation to the reality of 
 things external to the mind ? Kant appears to 
 have concluded that they are forms of thought and 
 nothing more; that their existence and meaning 
 as forms of thought can no more be accounted for 
 than the properties of matter ; and that although 
 our mental constitution compels us to perceive and 
 to think of things and events according to the 
 forms of space, time, and causation, yet these have 
 not, or at least may not have, any reality external 
 to our own minds. It is difficult to see how any 
 other conclusion is logically possible, consistently 
 with the metaphysical conception of Mind w^hich 
 was received in Kant's time, according to which, 
 although the mind comes into contact with the 
 external world in sensation, yet in thought it is 
 shut in and isolated. And from this the passage 
 is easy and obvious to a denial that absolute truth 
 — truth which is true independently of any facul- 
 ties of ours — is attainable by us, and a doubt 
 whether it has any existence. Thus with Kant 
 the conclusions of the speculative reason led to 
 
206 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 speculative scepticism. Although he endeavoured 
 to escape from the absolute scepticism of the pure, 
 or speculative, reason by means of what he called 
 the practical reason — that is to say, the sense of 
 Duty as distinguished from the sense of Truth 
 — this part of his philosophy is not generally 
 thought to be successful ; and it certainly appears 
 extremely improbable that if absolute, supersen- 
 sual, and Divine truth is opened to man through 
 the sense of duty, it should be made known in 
 no other way. It is certainly much more likely 
 that when once our eyes are opened to the light 
 of Heaven, everything will be seen to shine with it. 
 
 But to return to the conclusions of Kant's specu- 
 lative reason. His conclusion that absolute truth 
 is absolutely unattainable is what is now called 
 Agnosticism ; and, so far as I am aware, the agnos- 
 tics of our time have made no advance on this part 
 of his philosophy. 
 
 It is obvious that our views of the nature and 
 limits of knowledge must be much influenced by 
 our views of the nature of the Mind and the origin 
 of our intuitions. Although the view of the nature 
 of the Mind which Kant adopted from his contem- 
 poraries, according to which the Mind, or Soul, is 
 distinct from the body, and isolated from the ex- 
 ternal world in thought though communicating 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 207 
 
 with it in sensation, was the orthodox view of the 
 eighteenth century both in philosophy and in 
 religion, and may perhaps be called the orthodox 
 view still, yet it was never altogether uncontested ; 
 there were always some who maintained that Mind 
 has no distinct existence, and that thought is only 
 a function of the brain. According to their view, 
 the doctrine that Mind has a distinct existence is 
 only an instance of that error which consists in 
 mistaking abstractions for realities, and fancying 
 that where there is a name there must be a corre- 
 sponding reality. The necessities of language de- 
 mand distinct names for body and mind, and 
 generally for properties, functions, and actions 
 belonging to the physical and the mental orders ; 
 and before thought has learned to correct its own 
 errors this leads to the inference that these distinct 
 names are the names of distinct realities. This 
 view, denying the separate existence of Mind, has 
 till our time been regarded as materialistic in 
 philosophy and as heretical in religion ; but our 
 philosophy is beginning to see that it is true, and 
 our theology to see that the question has no direct 
 theological importance. In connection with this 
 view of the nature of Mind, the theory which was 
 formulised by Kant, of forms of thought belonging 
 to the structure of the Mind itself, has been, not 
 
208 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 set aside, but so transformed as completely to change 
 its significance. 
 
 Althougli Locke assented to the prevalent theory 
 of the distinct existence of Mind, he maintained 
 that what are now called forms of thought, and 
 among them time, space, and causation, are the 
 results of experience coming through the organs 
 of sense. This was never quite a satisfactory 
 explanation ; — even if the process of acquiring 
 these conceptions by experience were a possible 
 one, it appeared impossible that every one could 
 have acquired them so easily and so unconsciously 
 that the process of their acquisition has left no 
 trace in the memory ; and Kant afterwards main- 
 tained the opposite doctrine that they belong to 
 the structure of the Mind itself, and are antecedent 
 to all experience. It is merely a generalised state- 
 ment of fact to say that time, space, and causation 
 are forms of thought ; the question is how they 
 have become so. Kant regarded the fact as an 
 ultimate one, not to be accounted for. This was 
 natural enough, when the idea of Evolution as 
 applied to Mind was unknown, and all the proper- 
 ties of Mind, as well as the characteristics of every 
 species of living being, were directly referred to 
 Creative Wisdom and Will. But now that the 
 doctrine of Evolution is applied to all life, sentient 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 209 
 
 as well as insentient, mental as well as organic, 
 Locke's theory of these conceptions being derived 
 from experience has been revived, chiefly by Her- 
 bert Spencer, but in a greatly improved .form. 
 Spencer's theory is that they are results of experi- 
 ence which have become forms of thought, — results 
 of the inherited experience of the race, which have 
 become forms of thought for the individual. 
 
 This theory professes to combine all that is true 
 in the theories of both Locke and Kant. It pro- 
 fesses to be an explanation where Kant only offered 
 a generalised statement, and to be a sufficient ex- 
 planation where Locke ofi"ered a totally inadequate 
 one. I do not think it altogether sufficient, but 
 it is obviously a great improvement on both of the 
 theories which it professes to complete and com- 
 bine. Time, space, and causation, or force, are 
 elements of all the experience of all conscious 
 organisms ; and though experience is not con- 
 sciously inherited, yet its results are inherited and 
 pass into character ; so that when organisms in the 
 course of their evolution become in • any degree 
 intelligent, these conceptions enter into their intel* 
 ligence and become part of it. 
 
 Before going on to state where I think this 
 theory needs modification, or rather completion, I 
 will remark that in adhering to Kant's agnosticism, 
 
 o 
 
210 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 and denying the external objective reality of these 
 conceptions, Herbert Spencer and others who think 
 with him, appear inconsistent with their own prin- 
 ciples. Being unable to get beyond the truth that 
 time, space, and causation are forms of thought, 
 and regarding the mind as something distinct from 
 the world of matter and altogether unlike it, Kant 
 was consistent with himself in denying that they 
 are realities of the external world. But Herbert 
 Spencer believes that the mind is a part, and an 
 evolved product, of the world which surrounds it ; 
 and that these forms of thought are the result of 
 the action of the surrounding world upon the Mind 
 in experience. Now surely " neither the individual 
 nor the race could have the experience wherein 
 these ideas have originated, if the realities repre- 
 sented by these ideas had not existed before our 
 experience of them began. Time, space, and 
 causation are not the result but the cause of our 
 experience of them. Our minds have not created, 
 but have discovered them." 
 
 '' If this is true, we have escaped from the cloud- 
 land of metaphysics by coming out at the farther 
 side into common sense and inductive science ; and 
 we stand again, as we stood in our unmetaphysical 
 childhood, on the firm familiar earth and in the 
 ' light of common day,' trusting with not only an 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 211 
 
 instinctive but a rational trust, that our knowledge, 
 having grown from experience, truly interprets 
 experience ; — that our forms of thought, being pro- 
 duced by the constant action of the external world 
 on our bodily and mental organisation through 
 countless generations, really represent the realities 
 of the external world." 
 
 Our conclusion as to whether Herbert Spencer's 
 theory on this subject is complete and satisfactory 
 will probably depend on our opinion respecting the 
 nature and origin of intelligence. He regards it as 
 a result of experience, acting within consciousness, 
 through the agency of mental habit and the asso- 
 ciation of ideas, and accumulated and strengthened, 
 as all mental and bodily powers are, by hereditary 
 transmission. I believe, on the contrary, that 
 intelligence is as much an ultimate fact as con- 
 sciousness, and not resolvable into anything but 
 itself. I cannot discuss this question in the present 
 essay,^ but will mention one property of our idea 
 of time which it appears impossible for mere ex- 
 perience to have produced. " We naturally believe 
 that time is alike without end and without beo-in- 
 ning. Now the pure and simple experience theory 
 does not account for this. It accounts for the 
 
 1 I have treated this question very fully in my work on " Habit 
 and Intellij;ence." 
 
212 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 belief that time is without end, by the fact that 
 we have never had experience of any portion of 
 time without another portion of time coming after 
 it. But this will not apply to our belief that time 
 is without beginning ; for the first time that any 
 one's consciousness was awakened, he had at that 
 moment experience of a position of time without 
 having experience of any other position of time 
 coming before it ; so that, for anything that mere 
 experience can witness to, there is nothing incon- 
 ceivable in a beginning of time. This shows that 
 although we have obtained our knowledge of time 
 by direct cognition, and it has become a form of 
 our thought by the accumulation of inherited ex- 
 perience, yet there is something in the conception 
 which cannot be thus accounted for, and which can 
 be referred only to that intelligence which is not a 
 result of experience." ^ 
 
 But I thoroughly agree with Herbert Spencer in 
 believing that thought derives its laws from that 
 universe of things whereof the mind is a part ; and 
 from this I further infer that our spontaneous con- 
 ceptions agree with the reality of things, and that 
 our knowledge has a rational basis. This escape 
 
 ^ This passage, and the former ones in quotation marks, are 
 taken, with the change of a few words, from my ** Habit and Intel- 
 ligence," second edition, pp. 459, 460. 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 213 
 
 from scepticism and agnosticism seems perfectly 
 satisfactory ; so that the philosophy of Evolution, 
 though it is despised as being materialistic, affords 
 a basis for belief; while those idealistic systems 
 whereof Kant's is the type, which are constructed 
 out of the mind itself, notwithstanding their vast 
 pretensions to spirituality, lead by a direct and 
 logical path to absolute theoretical scepticism. 
 
 And if the intuitions of our intelligence in re- 
 lation to the external and visible world are true, 
 we may consistently trust the intuitions of our 
 moral and spiritual intelligence, which testify to 
 the absolute difference between moral good and 
 evil, and to the imperative character of the moral 
 sense ; and which teach us to hope, even without 
 or against all obvious and common evidence, that 
 there is Goodness at the foundation of the universe, 
 and that this Goodness may reveal itself. The 
 moral instincts alone are what make the reception 
 of a revelation possible. The fundamental axiom 
 of all theology is that God cannot lie ; ^ we could 
 not receive a revelation as from God if we had not 
 that belief independently of all revelation. The 
 origin of these moral and spiritual instincts to 
 which a moral and spiritual revelation can be 
 made, is not identical, but is parallel with the 
 
 1 Titus i. 2. 
 
214 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 origin of sucli intuitions as those of time, space, 
 and causation. We have true intuitions respecting 
 the external and visible universe which exists in 
 space and time, because we are a part of that 
 universe; — time, space, and causation are forms 
 of our thought because they are facts of that 
 universe of which we are part; and, similarly, 
 the moral and spiritual truths which we instinc- 
 tively recognise enter into the constitution of 
 our souls because we are intelligent creatures 
 of God, and members of the moral and spiritual 
 universe. 
 
 " War nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, 
 Wie konnten wir das LicM erblicken ? " 
 
 Were there not light in the nature of the- eye, 
 how could we see the light ? 
 
 I do not expect the speculation here advanced 
 to meet with general assent ; on the contrary, I ex- 
 pect to displease orthodox men with my premises, 
 and agnostics with my conclusions. Nevertheless, 
 even those who do not agree with my reasonings 
 will probably agree that every consistent and not 
 obviously absurd theory on this class of subjects 
 is worth stating ; and it may be that in a gene- 
 ration or two, when Evolution is as generally 
 accepted as the motion of the earth, some one, 
 in turning over the pages of the present volume. 
 
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY, ESQ. 215 
 
 will remark that I have taken great trouble in 
 expounding what is perfectly self-evident and 
 commonplace. 
 
 If I am called a materialist, I care neither to ad- 
 mit nor to deny the name. I agree with Herbert 
 Spencer that Materialism and Spiritualism are not 
 two systems of which each denies the truth of the 
 other, but two opposite sides of the same truth.^ 
 If I have to state my creed on this subject, I will 
 do so in the w^ords of Oersted, the discoverer of 
 electro-magnetism : "I am at once a materialist 
 and a spiritualist." And I will add, that I am a 
 Natural Kealist on a basis of Evolutionism. 
 
 1 I have treated of this subject in my "Scientific Bases of Faith," 
 chapters i. and ii. 
 
XL 
 
 EVOLUTION: HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 By the Rev. Sir GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 
 
 T HAVE undertaken to say a few words on Evolu- 
 tion in reference to Heaven and Hell, that is, to 
 the (supposed) state of the good and the bad in 
 future conditions of life, which are related to the 
 life lived by them here. Whatever be meant by 
 Evolution generally, and the Evolution of religious 
 belief in particular, no one probably will deny that 
 the highest, or, at all events, the furthest, stage thus 
 far reached in this Evolution is represented by the 
 belief avowed by St. Paul in the final conquest and 
 extinction of all evil. Without asserting or imply- 
 ino; that his belief is rio^ht or in accordance with 
 fact, we cannot fail to notice his conviction that 
 the only death which man, as such, can die is the 
 death of sin ; aud that from this death he can be 
 delivered only by dying the death to sin ; that 
 absolutely and perfectly none have died this death 
 to sin except Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son; that. 
 
 I 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 217 
 
 SO long as the principle of selfishness or self-will or 
 disobedience, that is, of sin, clings to them, men 
 can at best be regarded only as partakers of the 
 death of Christ ; that Christ, however, must reign 
 until He has put all enemies under His feet, that 
 is, until He has conquered moral and spiritual 
 resistance in every form ; that the last enemy to 
 be destroyed is death, tbe very principle of dis- 
 obedience or self-will, that is, of sin ; and that, 
 this sin or death being clean destroyed, or ex- 
 tinguished in all who had been tainted by it, He 
 will 2:ive back the king^dom to the Father, that 
 God may be all in all. 
 
 We may, if we please, speak of this belief as a 
 theory ; but in point of fact it is the highest stage 
 reached as yet by any human mind on the great 
 subject of the destiny of man. It by no means 
 marks the end in the process of Evolution, for, if 
 it be the highest point thus far reached by human 
 thought, it must in the end be reached by all 
 human minds ; and as yet St. Paul stands prac- 
 tically by himself, in a minority to all appearance 
 hopelessly small. We have, then, his faith at the 
 one end, and at the other the lowest belief, what- 
 ever that may be, which has dawned on the mind 
 of the savage. For on this subject we may, rather 
 we must, say at once that we can only go from the 
 
218 evolution: heaven and hell. 
 
 lowest to the highest, and that of this lowest and 
 highest we must ourselves be the judges. We are 
 not dealing with geological strata or with the modi- 
 fications of species. "We are dealing avowedly with 
 thoughts about heaven and hell ; and if we object 
 to dealing with thoughts, on the ground that 
 thoughts are not phenomena, we must leave the 
 whole subject alone. AYere we to go on and speak 
 of the development of faith or belief on this sub- 
 ject as part of the education of the world, a scien- 
 tific objection might more fairly be raised to our 
 words. Education, in the sense which ninety-nine 
 out of every hundred attach to the term, implies 
 an educator, implies a presiding will, implies a 
 definite aim. This for the present w^e must put 
 out of sight ; and we may be content to say that 
 man is an animal giving utterance to certain 
 notions or fancies on the subject of a life w^hich 
 he thinks that he shall live when he has ceased 
 to move visibly here ; that these utterances form 
 themselves into systems of religious practice, ritual, 
 and discipline ; that these systems can be subjected 
 to scrutiny and comparison ; and that, being so 
 subjected, they exhibit an unfolding of thoughts, 
 to which Ave assign a certain order, and to w^hich 
 we assign it necessarily according to our own judg- 
 ment. The conviction of St. Paul that all are in 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 219 
 
 the end to be set free from sin and to live in tlie 
 Divine righteousness for ever is not to be placed 
 on the same level with the thoughts of those who 
 speak of a bottomless Tartaros as swallowing up 
 ninety-nine hundredths of all rational creatures. 
 No reference to Evolution or to definitions of 
 Evolution is to make us hesitate to place the 
 former immeasurably above the latter; and if w^e 
 insist on regarding the religious thought of the 
 people of Dahomey on this subject as higher or 
 later in order than the hope of an extinction of 
 evil for all and in all, we put ourselves beyond 
 the bounds of debate not less thoroughly than if 
 we insist on speaking of a straight line as crooked, 
 or a triangle as square. 
 
 This caution is not so absurd or superfluous as it 
 may sometimes seem, for under cover of alleged 
 rigorous scientific method, a real tyranny is exer- 
 cised over us in the search for facts, to which we 
 are in no way called on to submit. It is implied 
 that the history of human beliefs is to be read 
 precisely as we read the story of the rocks, or of 
 that w^hich we call physical life ; but granting this, 
 we are still unable to read it at all, unless we take 
 count of a factor which is not present in what is 
 termed, for instance, the Evolution of species. We 
 have to deal with the thoughts of human minds, 
 
220 EVOLUTION : HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 and these minds are not phenomena ; nor can we 
 read their thoughts except by referring them to a 
 standard within ourselves. Keo^ardinsf the matter 
 thus, we certainly have before us many series of 
 phenomena which exhibit in their development a 
 striking likeness to those with which other sciences 
 have to deal. In the one and in the other there 
 are ages ; and these ages often overlap or are con- 
 temporaneous with each other. The age of flint 
 weapons goes on still side by side with that of 
 Minie rifles and Krupp and Armstrong guns. 
 
 But although we may for the present set final 
 causes aside, we must take care not to put our- 
 selves under any constraints to which the condi- 
 tions of scientific method do not strictly bind us. 
 "We will look on the evolution of relis^ious thous^ht 
 or belief on the subject of heaven and hell as a 
 process ; but when we have described the process, 
 we shall refuse to acknowledge that we have done 
 anything more, and we shall steadily decline to be 
 bound to any conclusions, or rather assumptions, 
 as to the cause of those processes or their purpose. 
 We are in no way required to put upon our necks 
 the yoke of a Lucretian bondage. The Eoman 
 poet might, if it pleased him, say that the birth of 
 the tongue was long anterior to language, and that, 
 in short, all the members existed before there was 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 221 
 
 any employment for them, and that they could not 
 therefore have grown for the purpose of being used. 
 He might deny that the eye was made in order 
 that we might be able to see, and he might assert 
 that the proposition which he denied was a per- 
 verse putting of the effect for the cause ; but his 
 own method is a not less perverse wandering be- 
 yond the limits of his evidence. If he has evidence 
 to show that the eye existed before there was light 
 to exercise it, let it be produced ; but this leaves 
 us just where we were with reference to purpose or 
 design, if there be any in it. Only, as a matter of 
 fact, eyes and ears answer a certain purpose now ; 
 and we may be content to note this fact without 
 further categorical denials for which we have no 
 warrant. When Lucretius spoke thus, he probably 
 had in his mind the phenomena of rudimentary 
 organs, of which some modern philosophers have 
 contrived to make so much. The existence of 
 these organs, according to Haeckel, is the strongest 
 possible argument " against the customary tele- 
 ology, or doctrine of design," and indeed shows that 
 " the ' moral ordering of the world ' is evidently a 
 beautiful poem which is proved to be false by 
 actual facts." The point, in the judgment of this 
 self-satisfied teacher, admits of no debate. " None 
 but the idealist scholar who closes his eyes to the 
 
222 EVOLUTION : heaven and hell. 
 
 real truth, or the priest who tries to keep his spiri- 
 tual flock in ecclesiastical leading-strings, can any 
 longer tell the fable of the moral ordering of the 
 world. It exists neither in Nature nor in human 
 life, neither in natural history nor the history of 
 civilisation. The terrible and. ceaseless strug^orle 
 for existence gives the real impulse to the blind 
 course of the world. A moral ordering and a pur- 
 posive plan of the world can only be visible if the 
 prevalence of an immoral rule of the strongest and 
 undesigned organisation is entirely ignored." 
 
 Such language as this is eminently unscientific. 
 It is not warranted by the facts before the WTiter. 
 He may speak, perhaps, of an immoral or unmoral 
 order as having been prevalent once everywhere ; 
 but to say that all things now exhibit the un- 
 restrained working of an immoral order is not less 
 unscientific than if, when a hundred facts are set 
 before us, we deliberately put aside fifty or forty 
 before we begin the work of comparison from which 
 alone our conclusions can be drawn. The fact is 
 that the term " Evolution " is simply descriptive of 
 a process, and to treat the description of a process 
 as an explanation of the nature of a thing is utterly 
 monstrous. The assertion of St. Paul may not be 
 calculated very nicely to satisfy the requirements 
 of scientific method, but it is vastly more scientific 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 223 
 
 than the arbitrary dicta of Haeckel. The unmoral 
 order of which the latter speaks is with St. Paul 
 the vanity to which the creature has been un- 
 vnllingly subjected by its Maker, who has done so 
 in the hope, that is, with the purpose, of bringing 
 all to the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
 St. Paul here distinctly recognises the two orders 
 of things, and his words are thus fully in accord- 
 ance with present facts. Not so the phrases of 
 Haeckel. So far as anything beyond the mere 
 changes of phenomena is concerned, the phrase 
 Evolution leaves us just where we were before we 
 began. Dr. Matheson, in his paper on " Evolution 
 in relation to Miracle" (at the beginning of this 
 volume), quotes the celebrated or notorious 
 definition of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who tells us 
 that " Evolution is an integration of matter and 
 concomitant dissipation of motion, during which 
 the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent 
 homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, 
 and durinoj which the retained motion underQ-oes a 
 parallel transformation." What do we learn from 
 these fine phrases ? Not a jot more than we learn 
 from the same language when it is translated into 
 the homely English of our forefathers, who, if they 
 had ever thought of saying anything of the sort, 
 would have said, " Unrolling is a making-whole of 
 
224 EVOLUTION : HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 stuff, and witli-gliding scattering of going, during 
 which the stuff goes from an unmarked not-stick- 
 ing-together one-kind-ness to a marked sticking- 
 together other-kind-ness, and during which the 
 going that is kept undergoes a side-by-side re- 
 shaping." Both sets of words describe a process. 
 Neither does anything more ; and we therefore 
 merely describe a process, or it may be many pro- 
 cesses, when we trace the workings of the human 
 mind on the subject of heaven and helL 
 
 If thoughts on these subjects, and practices re- 
 sulting from these thoughts, are found everywhere 
 (we are not concerned with affirming even this fact), 
 we need not on this account commit ourselves to 
 any opinions as to the universality of religion. . The 
 belief that man lives on after his body is said to 
 have died may be a belief of religion, or a religious 
 belief; or it may not. We may put the word 
 " religion " aside for the present altogether. But, 
 although it may not seem to be so, it is mere tau- 
 tology to say that thoughts about heaven and hell, 
 that is, about conditions not realised in this life, 
 could not possibly come into the minds of men if 
 they believed that a man died altogether when his 
 l)ody dies. In other words, the idea of heaven and 
 hell is inseparably connected with and implies that 
 of immortality — of immortality not in the sense of 
 
THE HEV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 225 
 
 endless existence, but only of an existence inde- 
 pendent of the physical death here. It is also 
 obvious that this belief, or this notion of continued 
 existence, must in the order of time and of thought 
 precede those speculations on the conditions of that 
 state which shape themselves gradually into pic- 
 tures of heaven and hell. As to this sense of con- 
 tinued life, and the meaning or purpose of it (if 
 any), we may think as we please. We may com- 
 pare the earliest phases of it with the rudimentary 
 organs which Haeckel has found so useful, and 
 infer with him that there is no Divine education 
 of man ; or we may say that man is so consti- 
 tuted that he must come to this belief; or we 
 may say that it is part of a work which is tend- 
 ing still to a goal in the unseen future. Of these 
 three conclusions the first is wholly unscientific; 
 the second may be taken as fairly in accordance 
 with facts thus far ascertained ; the third expresses 
 a belief of which it may be said with truth that it 
 is not contradicted by any theory of Evolution. 
 
 An examination of the lowest forms of thought 
 on the subject will show us that they took shape 
 from the phenomena both of sleep and of physical 
 death. The latter seemed to be the more perma- 
 nent condition, and this was pretty nearly all the 
 dijQference. In either case there was a change of 
 
226 EVOLUTION .•; HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 action. The frame which had been in motion was 
 now motionless; the voice to which they had 
 listened was now silent. Such evidence as we 
 have at our command seems to show that it 
 never entered into the heads of primitive men 
 to suppose that the change was the result of any- 
 thing being lost. Something, however, had gone 
 away — for a few hours, in sleep ; permanently, it 
 might be, in death — and this something was the 
 spirit or the soul of the man, which might leave 
 his body under both conditions. At once, then, 
 a way was opened for a thousand speculations 
 which worked one within the other, until they 
 grew up into elaborate systems of savage philo- 
 sophy, all professing to account for facts which 
 they supposed that they had seen. The many 
 and intricate developments so brought about are 
 well traced by Mr. Tylor in his chapters on Anim- 
 ism in his volumes on Primitive Culture. In 
 dreams the man finds himself wandering in distant 
 lands, or sees the forms of those who had died long 
 ago. On waking he can neither see them nor touch 
 them ; but he feels sure that he has seen and touched 
 them nevertheless. They must, therefore, be of ex- 
 treme tenuity, faint and filmy images of the more 
 full life which energises in those who still walk 
 upon the earth. Hence the doctrine of ghosts, 
 
THE BEV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 227 
 
 spirits, or wraiths. But though so thin, the soul 
 still occupies space. " The Chinese," Mr. Tylor 
 tells us, " make a hole in the roof to let the soul 
 out at death ; " and Meg Merrilies, in Walter 
 Scott's " Guy Mannering," asks immediately before 
 her death to have the window opened. But the 
 idea of continued life leads speedily, perhaps im- 
 mediately, to the idea of continued occupations 
 with all the old passions and appetites. Things 
 which were pleasant, or useful, or necessary here, 
 will be pleasant, useful, and necessary there ; and 
 thus we reach the horrible system of funeral human 
 sacrifices for the service of the dead. ^' When a 
 man of rank dies and his soul departs to its own 
 place, wherever and whatever that place may be, 
 it is a rational inference of early philosophy that 
 the souls of attendants, slaves, and wives, put to 
 death at his funeral will make the same journey 
 and continue their service in the next life ; and 
 the argument is frequently stretched further, to 
 include the souls of new victims sacrificed in order 
 that they may enter upon the same ghostly servi- 
 tude."^ This idea may, as Mr Tylor remarks, 
 lead easily to monstrous systems of massacre ; 
 but it is, obviously, an idea which refuses to con- 
 fine the notion of continued life to men only. 
 ^ Tylor, "Primitive Culture," i,, 413. 
 
228 evolution: heaven and hell. 
 
 Tlie warrior's horse or dog will bear him company 
 to the spirit land, and must be slain accordingly ; 
 but Mr Tylor, like Haeckel, goes beyond the evi- 
 dence of facts before him, when he draws the in- 
 ference that the continuance of the life of brute 
 animals has become a topic of that mild talk in 
 which speculators indulge " with a lurking con- 
 sciousness of its being after all a piece of senti- 
 mental nonsense." ^ 
 
 "We have here, with a definiteness which tends 
 to become ghastly, the belief in existence continued 
 after what is called the death of the body ; but 
 thus far we have nothing approaching to a hell, and 
 only the faintest possible adumbration of a heaven. 
 The slaying of wives or attendants sprang, partly, 
 from a notion that helpers were needed to make 
 the future life endurable ; and the notion soon 
 followed that it might also be made comfortable. 
 The king, the warrior, the master of the house, 
 might enjoy himself there as he had done here, 
 and he would, of course, prefer to do so in his 
 old ways. The American Indian thus came to 
 picture to himself the happy hunting grounds 
 where his forefathers still chased the phantoms of 
 elks and bears. But in all this we cannot trace 
 a sign of a moral or a religious idea. The man 
 
 1 Tylor, " Primitive Culture," i., p. 425. 
 
229 
 
 wlio is rich or powerful and therefore, it may be, 
 happy in the unseen world, is so because he was 
 rich or powerful here, but not in the least because 
 he had abstained from one set of actions or in- 
 dulged in another. "We are not here tracing the 
 thousand diflferent forms which the idea of con- 
 tinued life may assume. Savage tribes will speak 
 of the spirit of the dreamer leaving his mouth in 
 the form of a weasel or a mouse, and returning to 
 it again before he wakes. It was as easy to sup- 
 pose that the man after death lived on in the form 
 of a brute animal as in human shape ; and perhaps 
 the earliest idea connecting the conditions of life 
 hereafter with the character of the life here is found 
 in some of these notions of transformation. " In 
 Mexico the Tlascalans," Mr. Tylor tells us, " thought 
 that after death the souls of nobles would animate 
 beautiful singing birds, while plebeians passed into 
 weasels and beetles and suchlike vile creatures. In 
 Brazil . . . the Igannas say that the souls of the 
 brave will become beautiful birds feeding on pleasant 
 fruits, but cowards will be turned into reptiles." ^ 
 In whatever light we may regard it, the distinction 
 between bravery and cowardice is a moral distinc- 
 tion ; and the pleasantness or discomfort hereafter 
 being thus made dependent on a certain course of 
 
 1 " Primitive Culture," ii., 6. 
 
230 EVOLUTION : HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 conduct here brings us at once within the region of 
 moral judgments. How long this process of de- 
 velopment may have been, is for us not a point of 
 material consideration; but it has been already 
 worked up into a system when we find the Aryans 
 established as conquerors in India. " The rules," 
 in Mr. Tylor's words, " are set forth in the book of 
 Manu how souls endowed with the quality of good- 
 ness acquire Divine nature, while souls governed 
 by passions take up the human state, and souls 
 sunk in darkness are degraded to brutes. . . . 
 Obscure as the relation mostly is between the 
 crime and its punishment in a new life, there 
 may be discovered through the code of penal 
 transmigration an attempt at appropriateness of 
 penalty and an intention to punish the sinner 
 wherein he sinned." Thus "the stealer of food 
 shall be dyspeptic, the scandalmonger shall have 
 foul breath, the horse stealer shall go lame." ^ 
 The same persuasive arguments have been urged 
 by distinguished preachers of the Church of 
 England even in our own day. 
 
 Without going further we see that we have 
 reached a stage in which human thought looks on 
 the conditions of continued life as affected by the 
 life here. In other words, an essential distinction 
 
 1 " Primitive Culture," ii., p. 8. 
 
 I 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 231 
 
 is asserted between right and wrong; and once 
 started in this course, the human mind would not 
 fail to raise on this foundation a fairly coherent 
 and, it may be, even beneficial system. We, how- 
 ever, are concerned here not with the moral or 
 spiritual merits of systems, but solely with their 
 characteristics and modes of working ; and on be- 
 taking ourselves to Egypt, we find in times which 
 must at least belong to an early period of modern 
 history (if by ancient times we mean those of which 
 all record has been lost), not only a clear idea of 
 recompense for deeds done in the body, but distinct 
 abodes for the good and the bad, and with this the 
 predominance of an ecclesiastical order or caste 
 which exercised an authority fully equal to that 
 of the priesthood of Latin Christendom. Such an 
 order would not fail to inforce a rigid ceremonial 
 system ; and accordingly they taught that the 
 souls of the dead were subjected to a strict scrutiny 
 in the halls of Osiris, and having been examined 
 as to the performance of their duties, were placed 
 in the balance which was to determine their con- 
 dition thenceforward. If they passed the ordeal 
 satisfactorily, they were taken to a blissful region 
 surrounded by a wall of steel, from whose gate the 
 sun comes forth daily in the Eastern sky. We 
 thus come into contact with a new and a most 
 
232 EVOLUTION : heaven and hell. 
 
 important factor in the growth of human thought 
 in reference to the life of the departed. The Yedic 
 and the Hellenic paradise lay in the West ; but in 
 either case the abode of the righteous dead was 
 associated with the thought of solar splendour, 
 and, it can scarcely be doubted, was suggested 
 by it. In other words, we have come to a form 
 of belief which has been shaped by mythology, 
 that is, by words and phrases which had reference 
 to the phenomena generally of the W'hole sensible 
 universe. The imagery of the Egyptian paradise 
 is still sensuous enough, although the catechism of 
 the dead lays stress on many exalted virtues, and 
 demands something like a life of real self-devotion. 
 They whose answers to these questions are shown 
 to be truthful by an impartial judgment on their 
 deeds, may henceforth have all that they can 
 desire, bread made from the finest grain, and beer 
 from the red corn of the Nile. They may recline 
 under the boughs of sycamores, while refreshing 
 streams sing pleasantly in their ears. The cool 
 breezes of the north temper the heat, while the 
 gods themselves admit them to their banquets. 
 They wash their feet in silver basins sculptured by 
 the god Ptah of Memphis, a deity not unlike the 
 Hellenic Hephaistos, and they receive golden har- 
 vests from the fields allotted to them in the lands 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 233 
 
 of Hotep. But they are not bound to remain al- 
 ways even in this happy region. They may range 
 through the whole universe in any forms which 
 they may be pleased to assume. But though we 
 have in Egypt a powerful priesthood, we have 
 nothing like a purgatory. The wicked depart to 
 the wretchedness which they have deserved ; and, 
 if the judgment in the Hall of Law is favourable, 
 the dead go forth as gods whom nothing can harm, 
 and become one with Osiris and every other di- 
 vinity.^ In this hall the departed are made to give 
 a description of their own lives. " I am not," they 
 are represented as saying, "a doer of fraud and 
 iniquity against men. I am not a doer of that 
 which is crooked in place of that which is right. 
 I do not force a labouring man to do more than 
 his daily task. I do not calumniate a servant to 
 his master. I do not cause hunger. I do not 
 cause weeping. I am not a murderer. I do not 
 give order to murder privily. I am not guilty of 
 fraud against any one. I am not a falsifier of 
 measures in the temples." This chapter of the 
 Egyptian book of the dead is supposed to contain 
 the earliest code now known of private and public 
 morality. They who fail to satisfy it are con- 
 
 1 Renouf, "Religion of Ancient Egypt" (Hibbert Lectures, 1879), 
 p. 183. 
 
234 evolution: heaven and hell. 
 
 demned to an existence tlie sufferings of which are 
 fully as sensual as are the enjoyments of the blessed 
 in their paradise guarded by the walls of steel. 
 
 But if we examine these Egyptian conceptions 
 of the state of the good and the bad after death, 
 we shall find that we have advanced but a very 
 small way towards those more elaborate notions of 
 the unseen world with which the traditional Chris- 
 tian theology has made us familiar. The pictures 
 of both are sensuous ; and the descriptions of the 
 miseries undergone by the wicked are as terrific as 
 the joys of the righteous are alluring. But we 
 have as yet none of the sharply-drawn dualism 
 which comes probably from more sources than one. 
 There is no one lord of hell who sets himself in 
 armed antagonism to a righteous and holy God as 
 such, and delights in the multiplication of evil for 
 its own sake. But the daily coming forth of the 
 sun from the Eastern gate of the walls which fence 
 in the Egyptian paradise gives us a clue which 
 must be carefully followed out, if we would really 
 trace and understand the growth of thought and of 
 religious belief on this whole subject. The Egyp- 
 tian paradise was in the East ; the Hellenic para- 
 dise was in the West. The variation points to no 
 radical difference of conception. The bright flush 
 of the morning sky is as beautiful as the glory of 
 
 I 
 
THE EEV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 235 
 
 the sunset hour ; and we have to examine the lan- 
 guage used of both before we can determine how 
 far the two conceptions correspond and come from 
 the same source. It is, indeed, impossible to read 
 the descriptions which Pindar gives of Elysium 
 without seeing and feeling that they are drawn 
 from those manifestations of perfect loveliness, 
 purity, and splendour which come with the rising 
 or the setting of the sun. But the Western radi- 
 ance comes when the day is done ; and, so far, a 
 paradise in the West is better suited for those who 
 have rested from the toil of their earthly life. The 
 abodes of the blessed are golden islands sailing on 
 a sea of blue, and these islands are the burnished 
 clouds floating in the pure ether as the sun goes 
 down. From the tranquil peace of this sunset 
 hour all anxiety and fear are banished, and so the 
 blissful company gathered in that far Western land 
 " inherit a tearless eternity." No doubt the imagi- 
 nation of the poet comes in to give shape and 
 colour to the details ; but the very fidelity with 
 which his details reflect the phenomena of sundown 
 shows the potency of the mythological factor in 
 the future development of religious belief. The 
 inferences drawn from the mere continued life of 
 the dead, with the continuance of old habits and 
 appetites, resulted, as we have seen, in wholesale 
 
236 EVOLUTION : heaven and hell. 
 
 murder. The diverting of the mind from this 
 horrible carnality to the phenomena of the out- 
 ward world led to a marvellous exaltation of the 
 character and the condition of the good ; but it 
 led also in the end to a tremendous intensifying 
 of the horrors which fell to the portion of the 
 bad. In Pindar's Elysian fields there is nothing 
 that can degrade or defile ; but what spot or stain 
 can be seen on the deep-blue ocean of the Western 
 heaven as the sun goes down? In that serene 
 glory the islands of the blessed seem to repose for 
 ever. All the forms seen there exhibit the perfec- 
 tion of beauty ; but what unseemly forms can mar 
 the brightness of that golden home to which the 
 sun seems to be hastening, and which directly sug- 
 gests the radiance of a sun which can never go 
 down? Having advanced thus far, the mind of 
 the poet moves onwards with giant strides, and we 
 have to remember that it is the mind of the poet 
 which is the real teacher and guide of his country- 
 men. His eye sees the beauty of the violet fields. 
 Can, then, any except the pure in heart, the truth- 
 ful, and the generous be sufiered to tread them ? 
 But the exclusion of those who are not such implies 
 a judgment ; and how can the characters and lives 
 of men be tested except by judges who can weigh 
 the thoughts and intents of the heart ? Thus every 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 237 
 
 soul, before it could enter that joyous land, had to 
 undergo an impartial scrutiny before the august 
 tribunal of Minos and Khadamanthys. These 
 names are evidence of a connection between the 
 mythological or theological systems of the East 
 and the West ; and obviously we have here a 
 point of departure which may carry us into regions 
 purely moral. The poet was content to picture to 
 himself for the blissful Elysian conditions, which 
 show with sufficient clearness the source whence 
 his conceptions sprang. He could dwell on the 
 meeting of Odysseus and Laertes, on the forgive- 
 ness of old wrongs, on the reconciliation of deadly 
 feuds as the hand of Hektor is clasped in the hand 
 of the hero who slew him. He could speak of 
 Helen, " pardoned and purified," as the bride of 
 the short-lived yet long-suffering Achilles. There 
 had been loss and partings ; there is now restora- 
 tion and re-union ; but from first to last the imagery 
 is solar, and the beings to whom it is applied are 
 solar also. The idea was purely physical, yet it 
 suggested the thoughts of trial, atonement, and 
 purification ; and the human mind having ad- 
 vanced thus far, could not fail to make its way 
 from these conceptions to those golden lessons 
 which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates while 
 awaiting the return of the theoric ship from Delos. 
 
238 evolution: heaven and hell. 
 
 It is very necessary to mark both the definite- 
 ness and indefiniteness of the Greek beliefs with 
 regard to the world unseen. For those who on 
 earth had done great things, or who might be 
 counted among the really good and noble of man- 
 kind (and for these alone), there were the asphodel 
 meadows of Elysium ; and for those who in tyranny, 
 cruelty, or other forms of wickedness stood out 
 prominently among their fellows (but for these 
 alone) there was the hopeless prison of Tartaros. 
 It is possible that for the Greek the creation of a 
 place of utter darkness for abandoned sinners was 
 a moral or theological, rather than a mythical, 
 necessity. But however this may be, the pictures 
 of this miserable abode are very faintly and vaguely 
 drawn ; while the main point is that for the vast 
 mass of mankind, for the immense majority who 
 live only the " common life of all men," there was 
 access neither to Elysium nor to Tartaros. In all 
 this we can trace a strictly moral development. 
 But there were other factors in the growth of more 
 modern beliefs which at the outset were not moral 
 at all, but which have succeeded in gaining some- 
 thing like an imperial sway over the mind of Chris- 
 tendom generally. In the lands watered by the 
 Indus and the Ganges the thoughts of men were 
 necessarily occupied with operations and changes 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 239 
 
 in the physical world which did not so force them- 
 selves in the thoughts of the Greek or Latin. The 
 Hindu sowed his seed, and generally he reaped his 
 harvest ; but his doing so depended on the success 
 of a tremendous battle which was yearly fought 
 out before his eyes. There are alternations of light 
 and darkness everywhere ; and the history of inci- 
 dents in the birth, actions, sufferings, and death of 
 the daily sun shaped itself into the great epics of 
 the Western world. But in addition to these 
 changes the Aryan conquerors in the Indian Penin- 
 sula were vitally interested in another struggle to 
 which they came, more or less obscurely, to attach 
 a spiritual meaning. This mighty drama brought 
 before them the conflict of the Light-god Indra with 
 the enemy who had stolen away his cattle, or, in 
 other words, had shut up the treasures of the rain 
 for which the thirsty earth was yearniDg. The god 
 and his adversary are both spoken of under a mul- 
 titude of names ; but in every word we have the 
 contrast between the beaming god of the heaven, 
 with his golden locks and his flashing spear (the 
 lightning), and the sullen demon who lurks within 
 his hidden caves, drinking the milk of the stolen 
 cattle. In its simplest form, this fight is nothing 
 more than a struggle to gain possession of the rain- 
 clouds. But its incidents are gradually exhibited 
 
240 EVOLUTION : HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 under a different aspect, and tlie enemy assumes a 
 definite and thorouglily hateful character, as Ahi — 
 the throttling scake of darkness, the very word 
 which we still retain in the term '' sin." Through- 
 out the hymns of the Eig-Veda two images stand 
 out before us with overpowering distinctness — on 
 the one side the bright god of the heaven, benefi- 
 cent and irresistible ; on the other, the demon of 
 darkness, as false and treacherous as he is malig- 
 nant. This great enemy is pre-eminently Vritra, 
 the thief who hides away the rainclouds ; he is 
 also Vala, the adversary, and Pani, the seducer, 
 who reappears in Paris, the seducer of Helen. But 
 in all that is said of both, there is nothing to show 
 that the Aryan Hindu in the land of the Five 
 Streams ever lost sight of the physical character of 
 the struggle. In every case the image present to 
 his mind was that of the lightning hurled into the 
 pitchy black cloud masses to let loose the imprisoned 
 waters. The demon is hateful, malignant, treach- 
 erous, and merciless ; but he is the demon who has 
 his fastnesses in the clouds — he is the prince of the 
 powers of the air. The struggle between him and 
 Indra is the struggle between the Kronid gods and 
 the Titans, which in the Hesiodic Theogony Zeus 
 himself admits to be one for sovereignty or sub- 
 jection, for life or death. So in some Vedic hymns 
 
THE EEV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 241 
 
 we have the expressions of a wish that the wicked 
 Vritra may hot be suffered to reign over the wor- 
 shippers of Indra ; but both among the Greeks and 
 the Hindus, this is all that we can cite by way of 
 symptoms of that marvellous change which on 
 Iranian soil converted this myth of Yritra into a 
 religion and a philosophy. So completely is the 
 system thus developed invested with a spiritual or 
 metaphysical character, that we might be tempted 
 to question the identity of Yritra and AhrimaD, 
 were it not that an identity of names and attri- 
 butes runs through the Vedic and Iranian myths 
 which makes doubt impossible. The Vritrahan, 
 Yritra s bane, of the Hindu, becomes the Yere- 
 thragna of the Zendavesta, as in the latter the 
 Trita, Yama, and Krisaspa of the Yeda become 
 Yima-Kshaeta, Thraetana, and Keresaspa, while all 
 three reappear as the Feridun, Jemshid, and Gar- 
 shasp of the modern Persian epic of the Shah- 
 nameh. The fact of the genealogy is thus removed 
 beyond the reach of question, and further search 
 only helps us to complete the links. To the Hindu, 
 as we have seen, Yritra, the thief, was also fami- 
 liarly known as Ahi, the choking snake ; and Ahi 
 on Iranian ground becomes Azi-dahaka, the biter, 
 as in Hellas he becomes Echidna. But the struggle 
 
 which in India is through the whole period of Yedic 
 
 Q 
 
242 EVOLUTION : heaven and hell. 
 
 literature a fight to set free the stolen or pent-up 
 waters, is between Tbra6tana and Azi-dahaka, the 
 Zohak of the Shahnameh, a contest strictly between 
 a good and an evil being. The myth had received 
 a definite moral turn, and it suggested a series of 
 conflicts between the like opposing powers which 
 culminated in the eternal warfare of Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman. We have nothino; of this in India. If 
 Dyu, Indra, or the other bright gods had their 
 enemies, these enemies were manifestly physical ; 
 and there is nothing in the phraseology of the 
 Yedic hymns to lead us to the notion that they 
 looked upon any evil power as having an indepen- 
 dent or self-created existence. But on Persian soil 
 the word Verethragna, transparent in its meaning 
 to the worshippers of Indra, so thoroughly lost its 
 original sense that it came to denote mere strength 
 or power, and was used as a simple adjective ; and 
 as the power opposed to the righteous God must be 
 a moral one, a series of synonyms were employed 
 which imparted to the representative of the Vedic 
 Vritra more and more of a spiritual character. In 
 the hymns of the Eig-Yeda the Devas are bright 
 beino^s who fio;ht on the side of Indra : in the 
 Avesta they are evil spirits, and the Zoroastrian 
 was bound to renounce their worship. In this class 
 of malignant beings were placed Verethra and all 
 
THE EEV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 243 
 
 his kin, under the designation of Drukhs, or de- 
 ceitful. In the Western world, Verethra is still 
 familiarly known under the name Ahriman, that 
 is, Angro-Mainyus, or spirit of darkness, an epithet 
 which was simply an offset to that of his righteous 
 adversary, Spento-Mainyus, or the spirit of light. 
 But Spento-Mainyus was only another name for the 
 supreme Being, whose name Ahuro-mazdao is better 
 known to us in the shortened form of Ormuzd. In 
 this Being the Zoroastrian believed with all the 
 strength of spiritual conviction ; and the exaltation 
 of Ormuzd carried the greatness of Ahriman to a 
 pitch which made him the creator and the sovereign 
 of an evil universe at war with the Kosmos of the 
 Spirit of light and truth. 
 
 AVe have thus before us the full development of 
 Iranian dualism ; and with this dualism the Jews 
 were brouorht into contact durinsr their exile in 
 Babylonia. To ascribe to the Jews as a people up 
 to this time any tendency to monotheism is simply 
 to throw over our eyes a veil which must effectually 
 prevent our seeing the facts of the case and involve 
 us in a labyrinth of errors. Unless the Hebrew 
 prophets were from first to last mistaken, they were 
 merely a few voices crying out in the wilderness 
 of a sensual, corrupt, and cruel idolatry. The reli- 
 gion of the Hebrew people, as distinguished from 
 
244 EVOLUTION : HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 tliat of their proptiets, down to the Babylonish cap- 
 tivity, was the religion of Phoenicians, Canaanites, 
 and Assyrians ; and in their exile they showed the 
 force of old habit in their readiness to adopt the 
 Zoroastrian demonology, which connected Satan 
 with the prince of the devils, the source of wicked 
 thoughts. The victory of the Iranian theology was 
 thus complete. Henceforth the Jewish mind was 
 possessed with the notion of two hierarchies, the 
 one heavenly, the other diabolical ; and this notion 
 acquired increased strength in the earlier ages of 
 the Christian era. The nations which became 
 Christian had filled the world with gods and 
 demons, each with his own special sphere and 
 office. These deities the Christian teachers de- 
 throned ; but far from attempting to destroy them, 
 they were careful to insist that they had always 
 been, and must for ever continue to be, malignant 
 devils. But unless their fellowship was to come to 
 an end, they must be under the rule of some king ; 
 and this king was found in the Semitic Satan. The 
 theology which sprang from this root endowed the 
 king of the fallen angels with the powers of omni- 
 presence and omniscience, and made him succeed 
 in wrestino; from the rigjhteous God ao^ainst whom 
 he fought all but an insignificant fraction of the 
 whole race of mankind. 
 
THE EEV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 245 
 
 But when Cliristian missionaries came to deal 
 witli the Teutonic nations, they found themselves 
 in contact with tribes who had never been influ- 
 enced by Iranian dualism, and had never even 
 been drawn in this direction. The idea of one 
 malignant spirit marring and undoing the w^ork 
 of God was wholly foreign to their minds ; and 
 although the teaching of the priesthood might 
 exhibit the severity of that of Augustine or Ful- 
 gentius, it was met by a passive resistance not 
 soon or easily overcome. But probably not one 
 of the phrases which furnished the groundwork of 
 Iranian dualism had been wholly forgotten by any 
 of the Aryan tribes. These phrases had varied in 
 character from grave solemnity to comedy or bur- 
 lesque, and to the people at large, if we are to 
 judge from their folk tales, the latter mode of 
 thinking and speaking on the subject was more 
 congenial Hel, whose name we have adopted to 
 denote the abode of the wdcked dead, had been, 
 like Persephone, simply the queen of the unseen 
 land, which, in the ideas of the northern tribes, 
 was a land of bitter cold and icy w^alls. She now 
 became not the queen of Niflheim, but Niflheim 
 itself, while her home, though gloomy enough, was 
 not quite without material comforts. It became 
 the hell where the old man hews wood for the 
 
246 evolution: heaven and hell. 
 
 Christmas fire, and where the devil, in his eager- 
 ness to buy the flitch of bacon, yields up the 
 marvellous quern which is good to grind almost 
 anything. It was not so pleasant a place indeed as 
 heaven, or the old Valhalla ; but it was better to 
 be there than shut out in the outer cold beyond its 
 padlocked gates. The devil was, moreover, a being 
 who under pressure of hunger might be drawn into 
 acting against his own interest. In other words, 
 he might be outwitted, and was actually outwitted, 
 to his own destruction. This character of a poor 
 or stuj^id devil is almost the only one exhibited in 
 Teutonic legends. 
 
 But Satan, the Devil, Ahi, Vritra are all malig- 
 nant beings ; and if to this malignity be added the 
 powers ascribed to the Iranian Ahriman, and the 
 Jewish Satan, we see before us the foundation on 
 which all the descriptions of hell given in any age 
 of Christianity may most easily be raised. We 
 have seen that the unformed mind even of primi- 
 tive man gave expression to a certain moral feeling 
 in assigning dyspepsia hereafter as a penalty for 
 the stealer of food here, and foulness of breath as 
 the recompense of the scandalmonger. It can 
 scarcely be said that clergy of the English Church 
 have advanced much further when they can speak 
 to their people of the devils as seizing and torturing 
 
THE EEV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 247 
 
 " the drunkard by the instrument of his intemper- 
 ance, the lustful man by the instrument of his lust, 
 the tyrant by the instrument of his tyranny." In 
 the belief and practice of purely savage tribes there 
 are not a few things which may find a true ex- 
 planation in some theory of degeneracy ; and there 
 are also in the convictions, or alleged convictions, 
 of the most advanced and civilised races many 
 points which may carry us back directly to the 
 rudest forms of savage thought. The Greek had 
 his paradise for the high and heroic among man- 
 kind, and his Tartaros for those who had been 
 guilty of colossal crimes ; but all others passed 
 into a land of shadows. Of any notion of purga- 
 torial sufferings which should fit these feeble ghosts 
 for a better or happier existence beyond, we find no 
 trace, unless we are to find it in the case of those of 
 whom Socrates speaks as cast forth from Tartaros, 
 and as finally delivered from it when they have 
 received forgiveness from the victims of their 
 crimes. This is, indeed, a vastly higher concep- 
 tion than that of the hell to which certain Chris- 
 tian teachers seem so partial ; for if the Socratic 
 Tartaros resounds with the wail of the wicked, it 
 echoes the cry of anguish and sorrow^, not of malig- 
 nant and murderous fury. We have to betake 
 ourselves first to the East to find ''the hideous 
 
248 EVOLUTION : HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 inventory of torture — caldrons of boiling oil and 
 liquid fire, black dungeons and rivers of filth, 
 vipers and vultures and cannibals, thorns and 
 spears, and red-hot pincers, and whips of flames ;" ^ 
 and then from the East we have to come back to 
 the West if we would see the horrors of these 
 awful abodes intensified a thousandfold. Here 
 the pictures of Christian teachers represent the 
 dwellers in hell as glaring and staring with *^the 
 fierce, fiery eyes of hate, spite, frenzied rage — yells 
 of blaspheming, concentrated hate echoing along 
 the lurid vaults, every one hating every one." 
 Here also amidst these multitudes from whom 
 all restraint has been removed, the same teachers 
 have placed the truant schoolgirl, the refined, and 
 sensitive poet, the unbelieving philosopher, and 
 even babes who have died unbaptized. 
 
 In all such teaching there may be a good motive, 
 but in what we may call the Evolution of thought, 
 it is the survival of a barbarous belief; nor if we 
 multiply instances of such teaching to any extent 
 do we make any real additions to our knowledge. 
 In the same way the pictures drawn by Pindar 
 of the asphodel meadows and the pure life of the 
 blessed in Elysium, carry us as far in the develop- 
 ment of thought as the more highly wrought 
 1 Tylor, " Primitive Culture," ii., 89. 
 
THE REV. SIR GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 249 
 
 pictures of the " Urbs beata, vera pacis visio, 
 Jerusalem." Both in the one and in the other 
 there is, beyond doubt, a moral purpose ; but both 
 point to a further stage. That stage, as we said at 
 starting, is marked by the convictions and the 
 hope of St. Paul ; and if we may reason from the 
 history of the past to that of the future, the course 
 of Evolution hereafter will exhibit the process by 
 which the belief of an almost solitary thinker shall 
 become the conviction of the world. 
 
 Of the Divine purpose in all this we need here 
 say nothing. Neither the theory nor the facts of 
 Evolution call upon us in any way to disavow it, 
 and we are therefore at full liberty to maintain the 
 reality of this Divine purpose, the fact of this 
 Divine education of the world. I do maintain 
 it now ; and I do so because " Evolution " can 
 never be anything more than the description of a 
 process ; and although so long as we only describe 
 a process we are precluded from passing any 
 opinion on its cause or its issue, we are free, 
 when this task is done, to see what grounds we 
 may have for forming a judgment both as to cause 
 and issue. 
 
XII. 
 
 HAS EVOLUTION A CLAIM TO A PLACE 
 IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM ? 
 
 By the Key. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 
 
 THE doctrine of Evolution is "in the air." It is 
 distinctly formulated and explicitly adopted 
 in some form or other by the majority of scientists 
 and a large proportion of Christian theologians, 
 and is rapidly forming the habit of thought of the 
 educated and intelligent public. As yet, it is true, 
 its influence is only partial ; as yet its claim to 
 constitute a "formula of the universe" cannot, even 
 by its most enthusiastic advocates, be said to have 
 been fully made out. A considerable variety of 
 theories group themselves under it, and it is pro- 
 bable that a much greater variety has yet to spring 
 up. But that it represents, with more or less ex- 
 actitude, a true principle according to which the 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIK, M.A. 251 
 
 phenomena of tlie universe manifest tliemselves, 
 the vast consensus of opinion amongst competent 
 and careful thinkers in almost every department 
 of investigation would seem to place beyond ques- 
 tion. It has now to be considered whether the 
 time has not arrived when the doctrine of Evolu- 
 tion, so far as established by science, should be 
 recognised in Christian teaching. The writers of 
 the preceding papers, however they may differ 
 amongst themselves in the degree in which they 
 commit themselves to the general standpoint of 
 Evolution, and in the mode in which they would 
 prefer to formulate it as a law of Nature, are 
 evidently agreed that a very high probability 
 attaches to it, that it is a key to vast regions of 
 the visible universe, and that it contains nothing 
 essentially antagonistic to " the faith once delivered 
 to the saints." 
 
 If, however, a place is to be secured for the doc- 
 trine amongst the credihilia of Christianity, it can 
 only be by sharply distinguishing between its essence 
 and its accidents. Mr. Herbert Spencer s definition 
 is perhaps the most general form in which the law 
 can be expressed, namely, " a change from in- 
 coherent homogeneity to coherent heterogeneity, 
 accompanying the dissipation of motion and the 
 
252 EVOLUTION" AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 integration of matter." Its simplest illustration 
 would, perhaps, be found in the nebular hypothesis, 
 as applied to the question of the origin and resolu- 
 tion of planets. But it is chiefly upon a higher plane 
 than that of mere inorofanic matter that the law 
 begins to assume a practical, it may almost be said 
 a painful, interest to us. I must quote from repre- 
 sentative writers, as it is of importance that we 
 should deal with exact statements, and not with 
 loose, popular conceptions of w^hat they mean. 
 Prof Huxley says [Encycl, Brit., 9th ed.. Art. 
 *' Evolution ") : — "Evolution or development is, in 
 fact, at present employed in biology as a general 
 name for the history of the steps by which any 
 living being has acquired the morphological and 
 the physiological characters which distinguish it." 
 
 In this connection the natural history of the 
 germ is of great consequence. Investigation in 
 this direction has cast a strong light upon the 
 question of the emergence of higher from lower 
 forms of life. Huxley defines a germ thus : — 
 " Matter potentially alive, and having ivithin 
 itself the tendency to assume a dejinite living 
 formr And he adds : — " In all cases the process 
 of Evolution consists in a succession of changes of 
 the form, structure, and functions of the germ, by 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 253 
 
 which it passes, step by step, from an extreme 
 simplicity, or relative homogeneity, of invisible 
 structure to a greater or less degree of complexity 
 or heterogeneity ; and the course of progressive 
 differentiation is usually accompanied by growth, 
 which is affected by intussusception." This last 
 term is opposed to " accretion " — the method by 
 which stones, for instance, may be said to 
 " grow." 
 
 When thus stated, the principle or process of 
 Evolution would appear, so far as its theological 
 aspect is concerned, to be all but perfectly neutral, 
 and to deserve the epithet ^'atheous," which the 
 Bishop of Carlisle has so happily applied to physical 
 science in general.^ But it is unfortunate that 
 some of the most distinguished advocates of the 
 theory have been influenced by an unmistakable, 
 
 ^ "We want a new word to express the fact that all physical 
 science, properly so called, is compelled by its very nature to take 
 no account of the being of God ; as soon as it does this it trenches 
 upon theology, and ceases to be physical science. If I might coin 
 a word, I should say that science was atheous^ and therefore could 
 not be atheistic ; that is to say, its investigations and reasonings are 
 by argument conversant simply with observed facts and conclusions 
 drawn from them, and in this sense it is atheous, or without God. 
 And because it is so, it does not in any way trencli upon th€is7n or 
 theology, which cannot be atheistic, or in the condition of denying 
 the being of God." — " God and Nature," Nineteenth Century, by the 
 Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Carlisle. 
 
254 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 a scarcely concealed bias, to drive its application 
 beyond the limits of strictly ascertained facts. 
 With Huxley, Haeckel, Tyndall, and others this 
 has been notoriously the case. Of the several 
 conceptions of Evolution that betray an anti- 
 theological attitude, the following are especially 
 deserving of attention: (i) that which maintains 
 that the principle is the master key to the entire 
 universe, and (2) that which attributes to Evolu- 
 tion as such an intrinsic power of determining the 
 process it is usually considered only to describe ; in 
 other words, which views Evolution as deforce and 
 not merely as a law {i.e., "a notation of observed 
 uniformity in the occurrence of phenomena "). These 
 two extensions of the doctrine in the present state 
 of our knowledge are not verifiable, and therefore 
 must be pronounced unscientific and illegitimate. 
 In no case ought they to be taken into account in 
 considering the bearings of the theory upon theo- 
 logy and religion. Mr. Darwin himself, as is well 
 known, refused to allow that his theory precluded 
 the conception of an original creation ; Mr. Spencer 
 is exceedingly cautious in his application of it, 
 and, however he may personally lean to the view 
 that vital forms were originally derivable from 
 sub-vital ones, he refuses to pronounce as to either 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 255 
 
 the first origin of life or ''the dawn of mental 
 life;" and Mr. Alfred Eussell Wallace, the co- 
 discoverer of this law (to quote Mr. Sully's words)/ 
 " difi'ers from Darwin in setting much narrower 
 limits to the action of this cause ^ in the mental 
 as well as the physical domain. Thus he w^ould 
 mark off the human faculty of making abstrac- 
 tions, such as space and time, as powers which 
 could not have been evolved in this way." And, 
 as we have all heard, he " leans to the theological 
 idea of some superior principle which has guided 
 man in his upward path, as well as controlled the 
 whole process of organic evolution." 
 
 To the labours, dialectic skill, philosophic culture, 
 and, more than all, to the open-mindedness of such 
 men as Wallace, St. George Mivart, and J. J. 
 Murphy w^e owe it, that at this stage of the ques- 
 tion it is possible for us to hold, and triumphantly 
 to maintain, such a view of Evolution as is not 
 opposed, on the one hand, to the essential doctrines 
 of revelation, nor, on the other, to the facts and 
 warrantable inductions of modern science. With 
 such authorities to support us, Haeckel's gross, 
 atheistic materialism, Huxley's agnosticism, and 
 
 1 Art. "Evolution," Encyclopcedia Britannica, Qtli eJ. 
 
 2 " The action of this cause." This is but one of many instances 
 in works on natural and mental science betraying the influence of 
 the fallacy (2) above alluded to. 
 
256 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 even the vehement denials and disclaimers of theo- 
 logians, who would fain monopolise orthodoxy, may 
 be calmly discounted. The first of these claims for 
 the Kantian or La Place cosmological gas theory 
 '' that it is purely monistic, and entirely excludes 
 every supernatural process, and prearranged and 
 conscious action of a personal creator." Huxley 
 says : — "No truths brought to light by biological 
 investigation were better calculated to inspire dis- 
 trust of the dogmas intruded upon science in the 
 name of theology than those which relate to the 
 distribution of animals and plants on the surface 
 of the earth ; " and Mr. James Sully, whose article 
 in the Encyclopcedia Britannica far outweighs 
 Professor Huxley's in scientific importance, gives 
 it as his view, that " Evolution simply eliminates 
 the notion of creation from those reo^ions of exist- 
 ence to which it is applied." And many Christian 
 thinkers interpret the doctrine as a negation of the 
 great First Cause, and believe that to apply it to 
 the problems of man's moral and spiritual nature 
 would result in reducing the conception of sin to 
 that of a "merely temporary incident of his 
 transition from a less perfect to a more perfect 
 state." 
 
 But it is noteworthy that these criticisms are 
 pertinent only when Evolution is regarded as 
 
THE REY, A. F. MUIH, M.A. 257 
 
 taking place solely according to material laws. 
 This one view of it is made to dominate the wliole 
 realm of existence. Yet to such a limitation the 
 admissions of Evolutiouists of the physical school 
 are fatal. Huxley's great discovery of " Bathybius " 
 as the link between the living and the non-living 
 universe has resolved itself into moonshine ; and 
 as for the structural continuity of man with the 
 ape, Professor Dana says : — " No remains bear 
 evidence to less perfect erectness of structure than 
 in civilised man, or to any nearer approach to the 
 man-ape in essential characteristics." ^ And Mr. 
 Sully points out, concerning the theory as a whole., 
 that "as a verifying generalisation it is clearlv 
 limited by the fact of the correlation of mental and 
 physical evolution. These two regions of pheno- 
 mena may be seen to manifest the same law, yet 
 they cannot be identified. All the laws of physical 
 evolution can never help us to understand the first 
 genesis of mind ; and this difficulty is in no w\ay 
 reduced by Mr. Spencer's conception of a perfect 
 gradation from purely physical to conscious life. 
 The dawn of the first confused and shapeless feeling 
 
 1 Geology, p. 603. Even Tyiidall acknowledges that "here yawns 
 an immense gap which it is impossible to bridge over." And Darwin 
 confesses the absence of traces of the "intermediate varieties" in 
 geological stiaisi.— Origin of Species, p. 13S. 
 
 R 
 
258 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 is as mucli a " mystery " as the genesis of a distinct 
 sensation. Our best exponents of evolution fully 
 recognise this difficulty." ^ 
 
 1 Encyc. Brit Compare the following corroborative testimonies : 
 — "I regard 'vitality' as a power of a peculiar kind, exhibiting no 
 analogy whatever to any known forces. It cannot be a property 
 of matter, because it is in all respects essentially different in its 
 actions from all acknowledged properties of matter. The vital pro- 
 perty belongs to a different category altogether." — Sir Lionel Beale, 
 Protoplasm. 
 
 " If a material element, or a combination of a thousand material 
 elements, in a molecule are alike unconscious, it is impossible for us 
 to believe that the mere addition of one, two, or a thousand other 
 material elements, to form a more complex molecule, could in any 
 way tend to produce a self-conscious existence. Either all matter 
 is conscious, or consciousness is something distinct from matter ; 
 and in the latter case its presence in material forms is a proof of the 
 existence of conscious beings outside of, and independent of, what 
 we term matter." — A. R. Wallace, Contributions to the Theory of 
 Natural Selection. 
 
 " No one has ever yet built up one particle of living matter out of 
 lifeless elements ; every living creature, from the simplest dweller 
 on the confines of organisation up to the highest and most complete 
 organism, has its origin in pre-existent living matter." — Huxley, 
 Art. " Biology," in Encyclopcedia Britannica, 9th ed. 
 
 A writer in the Journal of Science thus attempts to explain those 
 lacunce : — 
 
 " On the evolutionary view it may be fairly contended, that the 
 circumstances under which the raw elements have been produced 
 may have been of infrequent occurrence as compared with those 
 under which the common simple bodies are developed. To the 
 objection that we never find any elementary substances changing 
 their nature, or reverting to the primordial state of matter, — an 
 oV)jection which reminds us of the cavil that we never see a man 
 reverting to an ape, — it may be replied, that under given conditions 
 matter has reached forms which are stable, and that none of the 
 original raw material remains." — Journal of Science, vol. iv. p. 4. 
 
THE EEV. A. F. MUIE, M.A. 259 
 
 In fact, the simple truth of the matter is just 
 this, that however fascinating the dictum, Katura 
 non habet saltum, may be, there are observable 
 certain breaks in the chain of being, the links 
 required to connect which have hitherto evaded 
 the most diligent search. And although the theo- 
 logical interpretation of these may be sneered at 
 as the invoking of a deus ex machind, and the 
 explaining of the unknown by that which is still 
 more unknown, it may be doubted whether this 
 extremity of science is not a providentially arranged 
 opportunity for religion. Explain it as we may, 
 these breaks divide the phenomena under con- 
 sideration into several planes of existence distinct 
 from one another, viz., the inorganic, the organic 
 or physical, the mental, and the spiritual, on each 
 of which we see the law of Evolution freely work- 
 ing, but its processes in any one of these cannot 
 be adequately translated into terms of the others. 
 There are, that is to say, several vast continuities 
 of being rather than one in the universe of which 
 we are cognisant. But whilst beyond this not 
 an iota of evidence is discoverable, within these 
 limits the evidence is not simply sufficient, it is 
 overwhelming. As representative scientific autho- 
 rities for the unbridgableness of the intervals 
 between these areas of phenomena, it is sufficient 
 
260 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 to cite Huxley/ Herbert Spencer/ and St. George 
 Mivart.^ 
 
 1 "The present state of knowledge," says Huxley, "furnishes 
 us with no link between the living and the not-living," although 
 lie concedes that "if the hypothesis of evolution (i.e., as a universal 
 lirinciijle) be true, living matter must have arisen from not-living 
 matter." — Art. "Biology," in Encydojocedia Britannica. 
 
 2 Speaking of the biogenesis theory, he says : — " That creatures 
 having qidte sijecific structures are evolved in a few hours, without 
 antecedents calculated to determine their specific forms, is to me 
 incredible. . . . My disbelief extends not only to the alleged case of 
 'spontaneous generation,' but to every case akin to them. The very 
 conception of spontaneity is wholly incongruous with the conception 
 of evolution. . . . Granting that the formation of organic matter and 
 the evolution of life in its lowest forms may go on under existing 
 cosmical conditions, but believing it more likely that the formation 
 of such matter and such forms took place at a time when the heat of 
 the earth's surface was falling through ranges of temperature at which 
 higher organic compounds are unstable, I conceive that the moulding 
 of such organic matter into the simplest types must have commenced 
 with portions of protoplasm more minute, more indefinite, and more 
 inconstant in their character than the lowest rhizopods, less distin- 
 guishable from a mere fragment of albumen than even the Protogenes 
 of Professor Haeckel." — Biology, L, Appendix, 481. 
 
 Although Mr. Spencer attempts by minute subdivision of dif- 
 ferences to render less marked the chasm between physical and 
 conscious existence, yet he tells us that in the latter "there lies 
 a class of facts absolutely without any perceptible or conceivable 
 community of nature with " the former. " The truths here to be 
 set down are truths of which the very elements are unknown to 
 physical science." — Psychology, I. § 41. He seeks a "unit of con- 
 sciousness," and imagines he has found it in a "sudden nerve shock." 
 " Mind is certainly, in some cases, and probably in all, resolvable 
 into nervous shocks" (!) — Ibid., I. §§ 60, 61, 62. 
 
 3 "Biology shows us that plants and animals cannot be separated 
 by any hard-and-fast line which physical science can point out. 
 There is no hiatus from the orang-outang to an alga or a fungus. 
 The hiatus which does exist is that between the living and the not- 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 2G1 
 
 It lias been generally supposed that the anta- 
 efonism between the Biblical and the scientific view 
 is at its stron2:est in the doctrines of Evolution and 
 Creation. To what extent this impression has 
 arisen from traditional and literalistic interpreta- 
 tions of the cosmogony in the first chapter of 
 Genesis would be an interesting and profitable 
 subject of inquiry. If the notable controversy in 
 the pages of the Nineteenth Century for 18S5-6 
 has produced no further result, it has at least 
 demonstrated that an ancient book, penned in the 
 very morning of the world, and embodying tradi- 
 tions from an even earlier dawning, is not to be 
 appealed to in solution of scientific questions, and 
 that science is incompetent, even through its ablest 
 representatives, to furnish an exhaustive tlteorij 
 of the origin of things. Biblical criticism has long 
 a^o taudit us to disting;uish between the infallible 
 accuracy of a Biblical document — especially in 
 matters of scientific detail, when as yet science was 
 unborn— and its substantial inspiration. It is not 
 legitimate to appeal to the "nebular hypothesis" 
 in support of the Biblical statements as to the 
 
 living ; and however iniicli we nuiy be persuaded that that liiatus 
 must have been bridged over at some period of evolution, all experi- 
 ments and observations go to show the absolute distinctions between 
 the living and the non-living now."— St. George Mivart, Satun and 
 Thought, 174. 
 
262 EYOLUTIOX AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 earlier phases of the natural world, as tliat hypo- 
 thesis, fascinatiog as it confessedly is, is still suh 
 judice ; and palaeontology, so far as its evidence can 
 be intelligibly deciphered, witnesses to a diflferent 
 order in the first appearance of animal life upon 
 the globe from tliat given by the pentateuchal 
 writer ; ^ and it is exceedingly difficult (as witness 
 tlie ever-changing guesses of exegesis) to harmonise 
 its data with the time he assigns to the making of 
 the world and the distance in time, accordino- to 
 the best calculations of Biblical chronology, between 
 that series of events and the present. ''What we 
 have to note," — as Professor Drummond. pertinently 
 reminds us, — " is, that a scientific theory of the 
 universe formed no part of the original writer s 
 intention. Dating from the childhood of the world, 
 written for children, and for that child-spirit in 
 man which remains unchanged by time, it takes 
 colour and shape accordingly. Its object is purely 
 religious, the point being, not how certain things 
 were made, but that God made them. It is not 
 dedicated to science, but to the soul. It is a sub- 
 lime theology, given in view of ignorance, or ido- 
 latry, or polytheism, telling the worshipful youth 
 of the world that the heavens and the earth and 
 
 1 In placing, for instance, the production of fruit-trees before the 
 sun, and of birds before reptiles. 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 2G3 
 
 every creeping and flying thing were made by 
 God." ^ Men forget — or at least have heretofore 
 too much forgot — that the chief purpose of the 
 pentateuclial writer was to convey a moral or reli- 
 gious conception of the universe, and that the 
 survey of it which he takes is not a structural or 
 internal one, such as the scientific expert of to-day 
 might be able to take, but an external and popular 
 one, such as the primitive mind might easily under- 
 stand. It is the merest pedantry of science, there- 
 fore, for any one to demand of him the exact detail 
 of a scientific treatise. He, equally with Professor 
 Huxley, appealed to "the people of average opinion 
 and capacity " in his day, and he realised his aim 
 by his magnificent opening sentence, " In the he- 
 ginnmg God created the heaven and the earth" by 
 the presentation in general outline of a hierarchical 
 scale or ascent of beings, and by the assertion of 
 an all-pervading Divine purpose.^ 
 
 1 Ni7ieteenth Century, Feb. 1886. "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis." 
 
 2 " This (the nebular) hypothesis is not in itself necessarily atheis- 
 tical, for the world might as well have bee;i formed by God in this 
 way as in any other. Indeed, I am free to confess that, could such 
 a theory be established, it would tend to exalt instead of lowering 
 my ideas of God as a God of order, and of the creation as a "gradually 
 developed and slowly unfolded artistic production. ... All tliat we 
 look for at the hands of science is to admit the analogical evidence 
 which geology affords of a real and true beginning ; and to satisfy 
 the intellectual necessity, the imperative requirements of re:ison, by 
 admitting that such a commencement there must have been, prepara- 
 
264 EVOLUTION ANP THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 It is likewise a great mistake to suppose, as Mr. 
 Sully and so many others kave done, that Creation 
 and Evolution are mutually exclusive ideas. The 
 most thoroughgoing doctrine of Evolution would 
 not necessitate the abandonment of the belief that 
 the ivorlds have been framed hy the tvord of God, 
 although it might have considerable influence in 
 modifying the sense in which we accepted the 
 Mosaic, Babylonian, or Persian cosmogony. Ad- 
 mitting the presumption to be a very natural one, 
 that if the principle of Evolution aj^pears to have 
 done so much it might possibly have done the 
 whole, it is yet well to remember that not only has 
 Evolution not yet made good its claim to be the 
 unifyiug principle of Nature, but that the intervals 
 in the continuity of the latter have with a most sig- 
 nificant persistency defied the efforts of the most 
 careful investigators and skilled analysts to bridge 
 them over ; and that, moreover, even were that 
 task achieved, Evolution knows no true beo-innino-. 
 Dr. James Martineau has justly denounced this 
 attempt to disprove the necessity for creative 
 agency as '' a mere appeal to an incompetency in 
 the human imagination, in virtue of which magni- 
 
 tory to the due reception of the sublime affirmation of inspiration — 
 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'"— Eev. 
 Hugh Macmillan's Bible Teachings in Nature, pp. 21-23. 
 
2G5 
 
 tudes evading conception are treated as out of 
 existence ; and an aggregate of inapj^reciable incre- 
 ments is simultaneously equated — in its cause to 
 nothing, in its eflfect to tlie ivhole of things ; " ^ and 
 the distinction lie draws elsewhere — " Science dis- 
 closes the method of the world, but not its cause ; 
 religion its cause, but not its method," is as useful 
 as it is sound. As to the alleged incompatibility 
 of the one theory with the other, a great deal must 
 depend on the manner in which they are conceived. 
 Tiie minutest phase of transition from one condition 
 to another condition in an evolutionary series is as 
 mysterious and "unimaginable" as the greatest 
 creative act ; but neither of these, as George Henry 
 Lewes has shown, is " unthinkable." ^ And whether 
 with some ^ we reduce the function of the Creator 
 to the performance of an "initiative act" at given 
 moments in the evolutionary process ; or with 
 others find place for such a function by drawing a 
 distinction between " ahsolute creation, such as 
 must have taken place w^hen the earliest definite 
 kind of matter appeared," and " derivative ov poten- 
 tial,'' " the creation by God of forms not as existing, 
 but ill potentia, to be subsequently evolved into 
 
 1 Essays Phil, and Thcol, pp. 142, 178. 
 
 - Problems of Life and Mind, ii. 292. Conip. Mivart".s Lessons 
 from Nature, pp. 371-2. 
 
 3 Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, pp. 617-8; and Murphy, The 
 Scientific Bases of Faith, p. 12. 
 
266 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 actual existence by the due concurrency and agency 
 of the various powers of nature " ^ or yet again by 
 conceiving of the entire world-process as a continu- 
 ous '' externalising " of the will, thought, and life of 
 an immanent Deity ; ^ we are conscious that the one 
 principle is as much as the other a necessary factor 
 in the genesis of things. Even in the atomic theory 
 of the universe, to which many leading exponents 
 of physical science are strongly attracted — a proof 
 of the vitality of the speculations of Democritus 
 and of his distinguished disciple Leibnitz^ — and 
 which has been so closely associated with the Evolu- 
 tionary theory,^ there have to be assumed at the very 
 outset, as Professor Clerk Maxwell demonstrated, 
 " an infinite number of molecules exactly alike in 
 size, weight, and rate of vibration;" and these prim- 
 eval atoms "have all the appearance of manufactured 
 articles." What prescient knowledge, what skill 
 and power, would be required for the creation of 
 these, the *' foundation stones " of the visible uni- 
 verse ! In any case, therefore, our conception of 
 
 1 St. George Mivart (after Augustine and Aquinas), Lessons from 
 Nature, p. 419. 
 
 2 Akin to Spencer's theory of the relation of the universe to the 
 " Unknown and Unknowable," and in harmony with neo-Berkeley- 
 anisni and the chief phases of modern thought. 
 
 ^ Vide his Monadologie. 
 
 ^ Mr. Herbert Spencer takes the atomic theory as the foundation 
 of his physical system. 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 267 
 
 the Author of things aud beings is not impaired, 
 but rather infinitely enhanced. We are not com- 
 pelled to think of "an absentee God, sitting, ever 
 since the first Sabbath, on the outside of His crea- 
 tion, seeing it go," ^ but of a being " of whom, 
 through whom, and in whom are all things," and 
 whose Spirit is the " veritable soul of the universe," 
 always and instantly present to those who seek 
 Him. "What the atmosphere is to the physical 
 life," says Dr. Joseph Cook, "that the sense of 
 the Divine Omnipresence is to secret prayer." 
 
 It has been supposed, but I think without suf- 
 ficient reason, that all " design " arguments will 
 be destroyed if the hypothesis of Evolution be 
 accepted. That they will require to be seriously 
 modified is certain. As hitherto formulated they 
 can apply to a universe only as static, not as con- 
 stituting a dynamical system. "For the notion 
 that every organism has been created as it is, and 
 launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin sub- 
 stitutes the conception of something which may 
 fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Or- 
 ganisms vary incessantly. Of these variations the 
 few meet with surrounding conditions which suit 
 them, and thrive; the many are unsuited, aii<l 
 become extinguished. According to teleology, 
 
 1 Carl vie. 
 
268 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 each orojanism is like a rifle-bullet fired straio-ht 
 at a mark ; according to Darwin, organisms are 
 like grape-shot, of which one hits something, and 
 the rest fall wide. . . . Far from imasfininsr that 
 cats exist in order to catch mice well, Darwinism 
 supposes that cats exist because they catch mice 
 well ; mousing being not the end, but the condi- 
 tion of their existence.-^ 
 
 ^ Zay Sermons, jDp. 301-303. Compare Dr. Wilson's argument 
 {Chapters in Evolution, 152) : — 
 
 " Why under the down-covered Lody of the moth, and under the 
 hard wing-cases of the beetle, should there be discovered the same 
 number of divisions as in the calcareous framework of the lobster 1 
 It cannot be by chance that there exist just twenty segments in all 
 these hundreds of thousands of species. There is no reason to think 
 it was necessary, in the sense that no other number would have made 
 a possible organism. And to say that it is the result of design, to say 
 the Creator followed this pattern throughout, merely for the purpose 
 of maintaining the pattern, is to assign a motive which, if avowed by 
 a human being, we should call whimsical." Lewes is even more 
 explicit : — 
 
 " But if we are to admit the human point of view, a glance at the 
 facts of embryology must produce very uncomfortable reflections. 
 For what should we say of an architect who was unable, or obsti- 
 nately unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his materials 
 in the shape of a hut, then pulling them down and rebuilding them 
 as a cottage, then adding storey to storey, and room to room, not 
 ■with any reference to the ultimate purposes of the palace, but 
 wholly with reference to the way in which houses were constructed 
 in ancient times ? . . . Yet this is the sort of succession on which 
 organisms are constructed. The embryo is nothing like the minia- 
 ture of the adult. For a long while the body, in its entirety and 
 in its details, presents the strangest of spectacles. Day by day and 
 hour by hour the aspect of the scene changes, and this instability is 
 exhibited by tlie most essential parts no less than by the accessory 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 269 
 
 Whilst acknowledgiijg that there is a certain 
 measure of justice in the distinction tlie great 
 physiologist here makes, I cannot help suspecting 
 that the greater portion of it is sheer logomachy. 
 As be puts the case, there seems to be an anti- 
 thesis somewhere, but when it is examined it re- 
 solves itself into thin air. The argument for 
 contrivance is strengthened rather than otherwise, 
 if, instead of supposing an instantaneous creation of 
 an oro-anism for a certain end, we suppose its con- 
 tinued existence dependent upon its fulfilling that 
 end, especially when in relation to its environment 
 we find that its history has been one of ever-in- 
 creasing adaptation towards doing so. It is only by 
 confining the attention to individual moments of 
 difi'erentiation and ignoring general tendency that 
 intelligent purpose can be lost sight of, and such 
 statements as that " Evolution supplies no explana- 
 tion of the universe" can be maintained by intel- 
 ligent men. But it is said, " Generalise the facts 
 and they explain themselves, so far as there is any 
 room for explanation ; all beyond that is the unin- 
 telligible and the unknowable." Not so ! "Gen- 
 eralise the facts " and they demand an explanation 
 
 parts. One would say that Nature feels her way, aii.l only reaches 
 the goal after many limes missing tlie i>a{h :'—rrohleins of Life and 
 Mind. 
 
2r0 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 in terms of purposive operation. Tlie admission 
 by Evolutionists, even of the mechanical school, 
 that nature is a system of forces tending gradually 
 to realise the perfection of function and the ascent 
 of being is all that is needed for the triumphant 
 vindication of a great " first cause," whether at the 
 beginning or in the midst of things. That nature 
 is a gigantic aggregate of "opportunisms," "lucky 
 chances," and "unintelligible accidents" is a con- 
 ception which only requires to be stated in order 
 to its being absolutely and finally rejected.' 
 
 This system of processes we call the universe is 
 not, however, to be judged of as we should judge 
 of a normal and healthy system. Moral evil is to 
 be recognised as present in it, and as largely the 
 cause of the difficulty, the "groaning and travail," 
 discernible in its operation. For this its original 
 authorship and its ground -plan are not to be 
 condemned; it is incidental to free -agency, 
 and immediately traceable to a principle or°being 
 antagonistic to its rightful king. To this male- 
 volent force is conceivably due the waste, the 
 delay, and the misery which are so generally 
 observable. But as to the first of these flaws in 
 the operation of Evolution (to which Mr. Lewes 
 
 > See the remarkable statements of Mr. IVallace, Naturcd Selection 
 p. 368, and Professor Owen, A natomy of Vertebrates, ch. xl. 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 271 
 
 draws attention), it is largely, if not entirely, com- 
 pensated for by the law of the conservation of 
 energy, and the availableness of the atoms which 
 have been set free from one ao^ofreofate or orcfanism 
 for use in others. That an all-powerful, all-wise, 
 and absolute Agent could have attained His ends 
 by more immediate exercise of power or will is 
 conceivable ; but even apart from the hindering 
 presence of moral evil in the cosmos, it is by no 
 means evident that such an absolute, instantaneous 
 method would be the best for the ends He has in 
 view. As a revelation of God the iDvocess may be 
 of incalculably greater value than the result taken 
 by itself. There are apparent, also, educative and 
 redemptive elements in the universal order, and 
 so predominant is the tendency to higher states 
 and conditions, that even the " laws of Nature " 
 minister to the unhappiness of the wicked, and the 
 gradual reduction of moral evil to impotence and 
 nothingness, and pain becomes an important factor 
 in working out ultimate well-being and happiness.^ 
 This tendency to ameliorate is visible not only in 
 the physical realm, but in the social, political, and 
 religious history of the human race. 
 
 There is another consideration that deserves 
 notice : are there not evidences that the Author of 
 
 1 See James Hi n ton's Mijstenj of Pain. 
 
272 EVOLUTION AXD THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 the universe has a serene joy in realising His wisdom, 
 power, and beneficence in finite forms, material 
 adaptations, and physical and conscious natures? 
 Because a creature of God does not happen to be 
 the "fittest," and therefore is doomed not to "sur- 
 vive," it does not follow that its existence is utterly 
 futile, or that it is not justified by a certain pre- 
 ponderance of pleasure over pain, a faint reflection 
 or communication of the blessedness of Him who 
 has called it into being. Mr. B. Carlill's most 
 interesting and convincing article in the current 
 number (June 1887) of the Nineteenth Century, 
 ''Are Animals Mentally Happy? " deserves thought- 
 ful consideration as bearing on this question. 
 
 As for the charge of ''fatalism " which has been 
 so freely brought against Evolution, it is obvious 
 that such a thing could only exist in a uniformly 
 materialistic system, not in one presenting several 
 planes of continuity, each embracing phenomena 
 in certain essentials peculiar to itself 
 • How comes it that the outlook of Christian 
 Evolutionists is so bright and hopeful ? If others 
 "faint and are weary," they at least are not so. 
 They are conscious rather of the removal of a great 
 incubus, and of a simple and natural "reconcilia- 
 tion of science with religion." In the present 
 number of the Fortnightly (June 1887) Mr. John 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 273 
 
 Addington Symonds, in an article that might 
 almost be styled secular, states it as his conviction, 
 that *'the main fact in the intellectual develop- 
 ment of the last half-century" has been " the 
 restoration of spirituality to our thoughts about 
 the universe," and that " the conceptions of God 
 and law tend to coalesce in the scientific theory 
 of the universe. In other words, spirituality is 
 restored to Nature, which comes to be regarded as 
 a manifestation of infinite vitality." Another 
 writer may be quoted, whose words more nearly 
 express the Christian interpretation of this ex- 
 perience. The Eev. Dr. Munger says: — "Evolution, 
 properly considered, not only does not put God at 
 a distance, nor obscure His form behind the order 
 of Nature, but draws Him nearer, and even goes 
 far towards breaking down the walls of mystery 
 that sliut Him out from human vision. In other 
 words, in Evolution we see a revelation of God, 
 while in previous theories of creation we had only 
 an assertion of God." ^ 
 
 A word or two with respect to another aspect 
 of the question. Whilst there has been shown to 
 be no serious antagonism between the theory in its 
 catholic form and the doctrines of the Bible, there 
 is much in it that throws a new light upon these 
 
 1 Tlie AjJpcal to Life. 
 
274 EVOLUTION AND THE CHEISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 doctrines, that alters our modes of conceiving tliem, 
 and appears to supjDort them with new sanctions. 
 The relation of Christianity to the great natural or 
 heathen religions of the world is invested with a 
 new interest, and a fresh impulse has been given 
 to those critical studies which have for their subject- 
 matter the composition of the complex of works 
 of various ages and characters we call the Bible. 
 The Pentateuch, which Ewald styles *' the Bible in 
 miniature," is now demonstrated to be in itself not 
 a simple but a highly composite work, and to lean 
 upon traditions in existence long anterior to itself. 
 And there is no book which so emphasizes develop- 
 ment as a law of the spiritual realm as the Holy 
 Scriptures. Eightly understood, the cosmology 
 of Genesis and Christ's doctrine of the re-birth are 
 assertions of Evolution. And there is a manifest 
 dependence of the later and more spiritual upon 
 the earlier and more strictly "natural" religious 
 teaching of the Bible. The ideas of one religious 
 movement are repeated in a higher sense, and in 
 new applications, in that which succeeds ; each of 
 the moments of the cycle of revelation fulfilling its 
 predecessor. 
 
 What a history is comprised in the mere utter- 
 ance of the names of God in serie — Elohim — Jahveh 
 — Our Father — Spirit — Love ! The doctrine of 
 
THE REV. A. F. MUIR, M.A. 2/ 5 
 
 Sacrifice is the same and }'et not the same in 
 Genesis and in Hebrews ; of Lmv in Deuteronomy 
 and Eomans ; of Atonement in the rude Adamic 
 altar and the final spiritual oblation of the Cross. 
 Faith'^ is shown as a principle essential to and 
 evolved through various diverse dispensations. 
 Laiv and grace ^ are traced out in their interaction, 
 in what may be called, for want of a better term, 
 "the education of the race." And there are 
 scattered up and down Holy Scripture hints of 
 ultimate aims and ends which connect in sublime 
 evolutionary order the fragmentary, discordant 
 experiences of the race in regard to pain, sin, evil, 
 separation, schism, and death. It would be difficult, 
 if not impossible, to over-estimate the place which 
 evolutionary conceptions occupy in the anthropo- 
 logy of St. Paul. He describes Regeneration ^ as a 
 process of transformation dating from an initial 
 act of faith ; and in speaking of the Resurrection ' 
 he refers to it as a change — a passage or transition 
 from the ''natural" to the "spiritual" in which 
 identity, personal continuity, is not destroyed but 
 
 1 Rom. iv. 5, II, 13, i6, 20; x. 8 ; lleb. xi. i, 6, 9 ; vi. 11 ; xi. 3, 
 11,28, 33, 39j&c. 
 
 2 John i. 17 ; Rom. ii. 14 ; iii. 20, 21 ; viu. 2 ; x. 4 ; Gal. 11. 19 ; 
 iii. 24, (fee. 
 
 3 Rom. viii. 18-23, 29 ; xii. 2 ; Eph. iv. 20-24, ^^^ 
 
 4 I Cor. XV. 35-54- 
 
276 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 only sublimated. And in his forecast of the future 
 of the race there is no trace of the poor pessimism 
 which Schopenhauer borrowed from Buddhism, or 
 which darkens with its shadow the latest visions of 
 our Laureate : — 
 
 " Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good, 
 And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud." 
 
 But as with St. John he spoke of the '' mani- 
 festation of the sons of God," and of "the holy 
 city, the New Jerusalem," in which the civic dreams 
 of the ages should be fulfilled, so as Apostle of the 
 Gentiles he looked forth with ardent soul to the 
 era when we all shall have attained "unto the 
 unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the 
 Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" 
 (Eph. iv. 13). 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 
NISBET'S THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 Extra Crown 8vo. 
 
 NEW VOLUMES. 
 NOjS'-BIBLICAL systems of KKLIGKJX: A Sympo- 
 sium. By the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar, D.l)., Rev. Canon" Kaw- 
 Lix\soN, M.A., Rev. W. Wright, D.D., Rabbi G. J. Emanikk, U.A., 
 Sir William Muir, Rev. Edwin Johnso.v, M.A., T. W. Rhys 
 Davids, LL.D., Ph.D., the Hun. Rasmus B. Andkiwon, Rev. Wm. 
 NicoLSON, M.A. 6s. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION; or, Modern Problems 
 of the Faith. By various Writers. 6s. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN FULFILMENTS AND USES OF THE 
 LEVITICAL SIN-OFFERING. By the Rev. Henry Bat- 
 
 CHELOR. 5s. 
 
 THE ATONEMENT : A Clerical Symposium. By the Ven. 
 Archdeacon Farear, D.D., Professor Israel Abrahams, Rev. Dr. 
 Littledale, Rev. G. W. Olver, Principal Rainy, D.D., the Bisflop 
 OP Amycla, and Others. 6s. 
 "We recommend our readers to purchase the work. Although the papers 
 are naturally argumentative and not devotional, the record of the efforts of 
 different minds to grasp the doctrine of the Atonement cannot but be help- 
 ful, " — L iter a ry Ch u rck ma n . 
 
 11. 
 
 INSPIRATION: A Clerical Symposium on In ^v]lat Sense 
 and Within what Limits is the Bible the Word of God? By the 
 Ven. Archdeacon Farrar, the Revs. Principal Cairns, Professor 
 Stanley Leathes, D.D., Prebendary Row, Professor J. Radford 
 Thomson, Right Rev. the Bishop of Amycla, and Others. Gs. 
 "The volume is an interesting one, written throughout in a temperate 
 
 and scholarly spirit, and likely to prove useful to the higher stamp of 
 
 theological students." — Church T bites. 
 
 III. 
 
 ZECHARIAH : His Visions and His Warnings. By the late 
 Rev. W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D. 6s. 
 
 "Of sterling value. Those who have found diflTu-uIty in grasping the brief 
 and mysterious parables of the Hebrew l'roi>het, will derive great help in their 
 study of this pro]ihecy from Dr. Alexanders careful and painstaking discua- 
 sion. " — Litera nj Ch urchman . 
 
 "This book will stand any comparison with the few other well-known 
 commentaries on Zechariah's Prophecy, and is a valuable addition to exposi- 
 tory and critical liiQiaiuve.''— Clergyman's Magazine. 
 
 London : J. NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 
 
 1 
 
NISBET'S THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY— Continued. 
 
 IV. 
 
 FOUR CENTURIES OF SILENCE; or, From Malachi to 
 Christ. By the Rev. R,. A. Redpord, M.A., LL.B., Professor of 
 Systematic Theology and Apologetics, New College, London. 6s. 
 
 "Carefully and intelligently done. The critical views expressed appear to 
 us generally just. His account of Philo is particularly good." — Literary 
 Churchman. 
 
 "It would be difficult to speak too highly of the wide reading, the careful 
 and discriminating thought, and the wise and cautious judgments by which, 
 throughout, the work is characterised. Every chapter is full of most inter- 
 esting information and discussion." — British Quarterly Review. 
 
 IMMORTALITY: A Clerical Symposium on AYliat are the 
 Foundations of the Belief in the Immortality of Man ? By the Rev. 
 Prebendary Row, M.A., Rabbi Hermann Abler, Professor G. G. 
 Stokes, r.R.S., Rev. Canon Knox-Little, Right Rev. Bishop of 
 Amycla, Rev. Principal John Cairns, D.D., Rev. Edward White, 
 and Others. 6s. 
 
 "A work of great and absorbing interest, marked by extreme ability. No 
 intelligent and competent reader can fail to find the volume a most deeply 
 interesting one." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN. An Exposition with 
 Homiletical Treatment. By the Rev. J. J. Lias, M.A. 7s. 6d. 
 
 DANIEL I. — YI. : An Exposition of the Historical Portion 
 of the Writings of the Prophet Daniel. By the Very Rev. R. Payne 
 Smith, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. 6s. 
 
 FUTURE PROBATION. A Symposium on the question, 
 " Is Salvation Possible after Death?" By the Rev. Stanley Leathes, 
 D.D., Principal Cairns, D.D., LL.D., Rev. Edward White, Rev. 
 Stopford Brooke, M.A., Rev. F. Littledale, LL.D., Rev. J. Page 
 Hopps, Right Rev. the Bishop of Amycla, &c. 6s. 
 
 London: J. NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 
 2 
 
NEW AND RECENT AYORKS 
 
 IN 
 
 Theological and Biblical Subjects, 
 
 ST. PAUL IN ATHENS : The City au.l the Discourse. By tlie 
 Rev. J. R. Macduff, D.D. With Illustrations. Crowu Svo, 48. CU. 
 
 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT : The Synoptic 
 Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of Peter, James, aud 
 
 > Jude. By Marvin R. Vincent, D.D. 8vo, IGs. 
 
 A LETTER OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO TIMOTHY : A 
 Popular Commentary. With a Series of Forty Sermonettes. By Alfred 
 Rowland, LL.B., B.A. (Lond.) Crown 8vo, Ss. 
 
 ATONEMENT AND LAW ; or, Redemption in Harmony with 
 Law as Revealed in Nature. By John M. Armour. Crown 8vo, os, 
 
 ST. PAUL THE AUTHOR OF THE LAST TWELVE VERSES 
 OF THE SECOND GOSPEL. By Howard Heber Evanh, B.A., 
 Author of "St. Paul the Author of the Acts of the Apostles and the 
 Third Gospel." Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. 
 
 AUTHORSHIP OF THE FOUR GOSPELS. From a Lawyers 
 Point of View. External Evidences. By William Marvin, Ex-Judge 
 of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
 Florida, &c. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. By William 
 G. T. Shedd, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology in Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary, New York. 5s. 
 
 AN EXPOSITORY COMMENTARY on the BOOK of JUDGES. 
 
 By the Rev. Canon Fausset, D.D., Canon of York. Demy Svo, lOs. 6d. 
 
 HORJE PSALMICiE. STUDIES IN THE CL. PSALMS : Their 
 Undesigned Coincidence with the Independent Scripture Histories Con- 
 firming and Illustrating Both. By Canon Fausset, D.D. Second Edi- 
 tion. Demy Svo, 10s. Gd. 
 
 CLOUDS CLEARED : A Few Hard Subjects of New Testament 
 Teaching Explained. By the Rev. Claude Smith Bird, M.A.. Author 
 of "The Life of the Rev, Chancellor Bird." Small crown Svo, '2a. 
 
 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES. liy Wm. Wukjiit, D.D. 
 With Decipherment of Hittite Inscriptions hy Proft-ssor Sayck, LL.D. ; 
 A Hittite Map by Colonel Sir Charlks Wilson, F.R.S., and Captain 
 CONDER, R.E. ; and a Comi)lete Set of Hittite Insc-rij.lions by W. H. 
 Rylands, F.S.A. Second Edition, with Twenty-seven Plates. Royal 
 Svo, 17s. 6d. 
 
 METAPHORS IN THE GOSPELS : A S< ries of Short Studies. 
 By the Rev. Donald Eraser, D.D. Crown Svo, <)s. 
 
 SYNOPTICAL LECTURES ON THE liOOKS OF HOLY 
 SCRIPTURE. By the Rev. Donald Fraser, D.D. New Etlition. 
 
 THE HEBREW FEASTS in Relation to ukcknt Chitical 
 Hypotheses regarding the Pent.vteuch. By the Rev. W. II. Green, 
 D.D. Crown Svo, 5s. 
 
 London: J. NISBET & CO., 21 LERNERS STREET. 
 
 3 
 
. HEW SERIES OF TEXT-BOOKS FOR BIBLE STUDENTS. 
 
 Small crown 8vo, Is. each. 
 
 I. 
 
 LESSONS ON 
 
 I. THE NAMES AND TITLES OF OUK LORD. 
 IL PROPHECIES CONCERNING OUR LORD, AND 
 
 THEIR FULFILMENT. 
 
 The Fifty-two Lessons forming a Year's Course of Instruction for 
 
 Bible- Classes, Sunday-Schools, and Lectures. 
 
 By Flavel S. Cook, D.D., Chaplain of the Lock, London. 
 
 ** Extremely full in the matter of reference and explanation, and likely to 
 make the user ' search the Scriptures.' " — Record. 
 
 "A compilation of great value. It contains suggestive matter for many 
 most instructive Lessons." — Church Sunday-School Magazine. 
 
 "The design is admirable, and the execution very satisfactory."— PresJ^/- 
 terian Churchman. 
 
 II. 
 
 GOSPEL TYPES AND SHADOWS OF THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 Fifty-two Short Studies on Typical Subjects. 
 
 By the Rev. William Odom, Vicar of St. Simon's, Sheffield, 
 
 Author of " The Church of England : Her Principles, Ministry, and 
 
 Sacraments," &c. 
 
 Third Edition, Revised. 
 
 This work comprises an Introduction, Table of Messianic Prophecies, 
 and Fifty-two Short Studies on the Typical Persons, Places, and Things 
 of the Old Testament. It is a convenient handbook to the Typology of 
 Scripture, and forms a Year's Course of Lessons for the Sunday School. 
 
 The late Bishop Chr. Wordsworth wrote :— " Your excellent little work 
 will be of much use in unfolding the spiritual sense of the Divine Word." 
 
 III. 
 LESSONS ON 
 
 L THE WORDS OF OUR LORD. 
 II. CLAIMS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Being Fifty-two Lessons, forming a Year's Course of Instruction for 
 I Bible-Classeg, Sunday-Schools, and Lectures, 
 
 f By Flavel S. Cook, M.A., D.D. 
 
 London: J. NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 
 4 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 
 
 1 1012 01247 9657