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CHAPTER XII.

THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION.

Prejudiced Opinions on the Subject.-" Creation" sometimes denied from Prejudice.The Unknowable.-Mr. Herbert Spencer's Objections to Theism; to Creation.Meanings of Term "Creation."-Confusion from not distinguishing between "Primary" and "Derivative" Creation.—Mr. Darwin's Objections.-Bearing of Christianity on the Theory of Evolution.-Supposed Opposition, the Result of a Misconception.-Theological Authority not opposed to Evolution.-St. Augustine.-St. Thomas Aquinas.-Certain Consequences of Want of Flexibility of Mind.-Reason and Imagination.-The First Cause and Demonstration.-Parallel between Christianity and Natural Theology.-What Evolution of Species is.-Prof. Agassiz.-Innate Powers must be recognized.-Bearing of Evolution on Religious Belief.-Prof. Huxley.-Prof. Owen.-Mr. Wallace.-Mr. Darwin.-A priori Conception of Divine Action.-Origin of Man.-Absolute Creation and Dogma.-Mr. Wallace's View. -A Supernatural Origin for Man's Body not necessary.-Two Orders of Being in Man.-Two Modes of Origin.-Harmony of the Physical, Hyperphysical, and Supernatural.-Reconciliation of Science and Religion as regards Evolution.-Conclusion

THE special "Darwinian Theory " and that of an evolutionary process neither excessively minute nor fortuitous, having now been considered, it is time to turn to the important question, whether both or either of these conceptions may have any bearing, and if any, what, upon Christian belief.

Some readers will consider such an inquiry to be a work of supererogation. Seeing clearly themselves the absurdity of prevalent popular views, and the shallowness of popular objections, they may be impatient of any discussion on the subject. But it is submitted that there are many minds worthy of the highest esteem and of every consideration, which have regarded the subject hitherto almost exclusively from one point of view; that there are some persons who

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 "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.

66

"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

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!"

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3 Loc. cit., p. 108.

4 Loc. cit., p. 43.

5 Loc. cit., p. 46.

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."

7 66 'Lay Sermons," p. 20.

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