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many truly religious but unscientific persons have, for their parts, opposed and denounced scientific inquiry as dangerous to religion. This opposition has done and can do no good. It is a pity, for instance, that some theologians have undertaken to oppose, and sometimes to denounce, the Darwinian theory of evolution, as though it attacked first the existence of a Creator, and, second, the possession of a spiritual nature or being by man. It does neither. It can concern itself only with physical facts and phenom

ena.

The learned botanist, Dr. Asa Gray, himself both a true man of science and an earnest Christian, has tersely pointed out that the theory of evolution considers only "how things go on," and not at all "how things began."

Nor does the inquiry touch the higher or spiritual part of man at all. Words often do a curious mischief, and to many sincere men and women the phrase "origin of species" has seemed to denote that Mr. Darwin was considering the origin of life —which, nevertheless, is as far as possible from the truth. Mr. Darwin himself wrote, in his first book: "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 law of gravity, from so simple a beginning

endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved."

Surely the philosopher who wrote thus need not be held the enemy of our faith in God?

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VII.

SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE.

THE most notable effort of much of the scientific investigation of the last quarter of a century or more has been to show in how many ways the human race are like the beasts. Certainly, it has been clearly demonstrated that mankind are very closely and wonderfully related to those we call the lower animals, so that the reasonable conclusion of science is hardly to be doubted, that our bodies are, in fact, made on the same general plan as theirs, and apparently by the same Maker; that our physical part is closely related to theirs; and that it is not impossible nor even improbable-though not scientifically established that, so far as the human body goes, it may have been developed out of the body of some ape, who, in his turn, in the course of ages, was developed out of some creature far lower in the scale of life than himself.

Now, those who believe that there is a God, and that he is the omnipotent Creator of the universe, ought not to deny that, if he wished, he was able

to carry on the work of creation by the method supposed by Mr. Darwin; or that, further, as in our belief he is also omniscient, he may in his wisdom have seen that this was, on the whole, the best way. Certainly, the thought that the Creator was able to set in motion, in the very beginning, laws which should produce the infinitely varied results we know, gives us a higher idea of his admirable genius, if that word may be used in such a connection, or of his wonderful wisdom and power, than the other notion, that he interfered anew at every step in the creation, and made now a turtle, and anon a mastodon, and still later a rhinoceros, a lion, or a monkey.

Admitting, however, the work of creation to have gone on through a single impetus, as Mr. Darwin's theory suggests, it by no means follows that God ceased thereafter to be an active being, and became a nonentity in the universe to which he had given that impetus; or that, as some one lately suggested, God, having set the work of creation agoing by the fiat of his will, thereupon committed suicide.

Nor does it follow that because we are, on the side of our bodies, so closely related to the beasts we are, therefore, only beasts, or no more than beasts, ourselves. This would be taking for granted much more than is proved, or even suggested. A person

only moderately familiar with machinery might ex amine two complicated engines, and seeing in both a certain number of wheels and other parts much alike, might conclude that both machines were undoubtedly intended and made exclusively for the same uses. And yet he might be entirely mistaken, and his mistake would be shown whenever the two machines were set to work, and when one was seen to do all the work of the other, plus other work or results of which the first was totally incapable.

So, as to men and animals, it is not difficult to show that they have a great many parts alike; that in many respects their functions are the same; that, indeed, up to a certain point the two machines are curiously and wonderfully similar-and to that extent we are strangely related to the beasts. But when we watch the operations of the two machines we are compelled to see that one does work of which the other is incapable; and what is more, that even the functions which both have in common are performed on the whole better and more effectively by man than by the beasts.

We see that the animals fulfil all their functions completely here in this life. They eat, drink, and multiply, and they seek to do no more. Some of them do not even fulfil these ends as perfectly in

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