are opposed to the progress (in their own minds or in that of their children or dependants) of physical scientific truth —the natural revelation—through a mistaken estimate of its religious bearings, while there are others who are zealous in its promotion from a precisely similar error. For the sake of both these, then, the author may perhaps be pardoned for entering slightly on very elementary matters relating to the question whether evolution or Darwinism has any, and if any, what, bearing on theology.

There are at least two classes of men who will certainly assert that they have a very important and highly-significant bearing upon it.

One of these classes consists of persons zealous for reli gion indeed, but who identify orthodoxy with their own private interpretation of Scripture or with narrow opinions in which they have been brought up-opinions doubtless widely spread, but at the same time destitute of any distinct and authoritative sanction on the part of the Christian Church.

The other class is made up of men hostile to religion, and who are glad to make use of any and every argument which they think may possibly be available against it.

Some individuals within this latter class may not believe in the existence of God, but may yet abstain from publicly avowing this absence of belief, contenting themselves with denials of "6 creation" and " design," though these denials are really consequences of their attitude of mind respecting the most important and fundamental of all beliefs.

Without a distinct belief in a personal God it is impossible to have any religion worthy of the name, and no one can at the same time accept the Christian religion and deny the dogma of creation.

"I believe in God," "the Creator of Heaven and Earth," the very first clauses of the Apostles' Creed, for

mally commit those who accept them to the assertion of this belief. If, therefore, any theory of physical science really conflicts with such an authoritative statement, its importance to Christians is unquestionable.

As, however, "creation" forms a part of "revelation," and as 66 revelation" appeals for its acceptance to "reason,' which has to prepare a basis for it by an intelligent acceptance of theism on purely rational grounds, it is necessary to start with a few words as to the reasonableness of belief in God, which indeed are less superfluous than some readers may perhaps imagine; "a few words," because this is not the place where the argument can be drawn out, but only one or two hints given in reply to certain modern objections.

1

No better example perhaps can be taken, as a type of these objections, than a passage in Mr. Herbert Spencer's "First Principles." This author constantly speaks of the "ultimate cause of things" as "the unknowable,” a term singularly unfortunate, and, as Mr. James Martineau has pointed out, even self-contradictory: for that entity, the

2

1 See 2d edit., p. 113.

2 "Essays, Philosophical and Theological," Trübner & Co., First Series, 1866, p. 190. Every relative disability may be read two ways. A disqualification in the nature of thought for knowing x is, from the other side, a disqualification in the nature of x from being known. To say, then, that the First Cause is wholly removed from our apprehension is not simply a disclaimer of faculty on our part: it is a charge of inability against the First Cause too. The dictum about it is this: It is a Being that may exist out of knowledge, but that is precluded from entering within the sphere of knowledge.' We are told in one breath that this Being must be in every sense 'perfect, complete, total-including in itself all power, and transcending all law' (p. 38); and in another that this perfect omnipotent One is totally incapable of revealing any one of an infinite store of attributes. Need we point out the contradictions which this position involves? If you abide by it, you deny the Absolute and Infinite in the very act of affirming it, for, in debarring the First Cause from self-revelation, you impose a limit on its nature. And, in the

knowledge of the existence of which presses itself ever more and more upon the cultivated intellect, cannot be the unknown, still less the unknowable, because we certainly know it, in that we know for certain that it exists. Nay more, to predicate incognoscibility of it, is even a certain knowledge of the mode of its existence. Mr. H. Spencer says: "The consciousness of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phenomena has been growing ever clearer; and must eventually, be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its nature transcends intuition, and is beyond imagination, is the certainty toward which intelligence has from the first been progressing." One would think, then, that the familiar and accepted word "the Inscrutable" (which is in this passage actually employed, and to which no theologian would object) would be an infinitely better term than "the unknowable." The above extract has, however, such a theistic aspect that some readers may think the opposition here offered superfluous; it may be well, therefore, to quote two other sentences. In another place he observes: Passing over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that of conceivability, we see that atheism, pantheism, and theism, when rigorously analyzed, severally prove to be absolutely unthinkable;" and speaking of "every form of religion," he adds," "The analysis of every possible hypothesis proves, not simply that no hypothesis is sufficient, but that no hypothesis is even thinkable." The unknowable is admitted to be a power which cannot be regarded as having

4

very act of declaring the First Cause incognizable, you do not permit it to remain unknown. For that only is unknown of which you can neither affirm nor deny any predicate; here you deny the power of self-disclosure to the 'Absolute,' of which, therefore, something is known-viz., that nothing can be known!"

3 Loc. cit., p. 108.

4 Loc. cit., p. 43.

5 Loc. cit., p. 46.

66

sympathy with us, but as one to which no emotion whatever can be ascribed, and we are expressly forbidden, “by duty," to affirm personality of God as much as to deny it of Him. How such a being can be presented as an object on which to exercise religious emotion it is difficult indeed to understand. Aspiration, love, devotion to be poured forth upon what we can never know, upon what we can never affirm to know, or care for, us, our thoughts or actions, or to possess the attributes of wisdom and goodness! The worship offered in such a religion must be, as Prof. Huxley says,' for the most part of the silent sort"-silent not only as to the spoken word, but silent as to the mental conception also. It will be difficult to distinguish the follower of this religion from the follower of none, and the man who declines either to assert or to deny the existence of God is practically in the position of an atheist. For theism enjoins the cultivation of sentiments of love and devotion to God, and the practice of their external expression. Atheism forbids both, while the simply non-theist abstains in conformity with the prohibition of the atheist, and thus practically sides with him. Moreover, since man cannot imagine that of which he has no experience in any way whatever, and since he has experience only of human perfections and of the powers and properties of inferior existences, if he be required to deny human perfections and to

6 Mr. J. Martineau, in his "Essays," vol. i., p. 211, observes: "Mr. Spencer's conditions of pious worship are hard to satisfy; there must be between the Divine and human no communion of thought, relations of conscience, or approach of affection." 'But you cannot constitute

a religion out of mystery alone, any more than out of knowledge alone; nor can you measure the relation of doctrines to humility and piety by the mere amount of conscious darkness which they leave. All worship, being directed to what is above us and transcends our comprehension, stands in presence of a mystery. But not all that stands before a mystery is worship."

"Lay Sermons,” p. 20.

abstain from making use of such conceptions, he is thereby necessarily reduced to others of an inferior order. Mr. H. Spencer says, "Those who espouse this alternative posi tion make the erroneous assumption that the choice is between personality and something lower than personality; whereas the choice is rather between personality and something higher. Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion? "

"It is true we are totally unable to conceive any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for questioning its existence; it is rather the reverse." "May we not therefore rightly refrain from assigning to the ‘ultimate cause' any attributes whatever, on the ground that such attributes, derived as they must be from our own natures, are not elevations but degradations?" The way, however, to arrive at the object aimed at (i. e., to obtain the best attainable conception of the First Cause) is not to refrain from the only conceptions possible to us, but to seek the very highest of these, and then declare their utter inadequacy; and this is precisely the course which has been pursued by theologians. It is to be regretted that, before writing on this matter, Mr. Spencer did not more thoroughly acquaint himself with the ordinary doctrine on the subject. It is always taught in the Church schools of divinity, that nothing, not even existence, is to be predicated univocally of "God" and "creatures;" that, after exhausting ingenuity to arrive at the loftiest possible conceptions, we must declare them to be utterly inadequate; that, after all, they are but accommodations to human infirmity; that they are in a sense objectively false (because of their inadequacy), though subjectively and very practically true. But the difference between this mode of treatment and that adopted by Mr. Spencer is wide indeed; for the practical 8 Loc. cit., p. 109.