enlightened a teacher of the deeper experiences of the spiritual life as the Church is likely to see to the end of time. He was no weak sentimentalist, nor was he a narrow dogmatist, yet it is impossible to connect spiritual condition more closely with simple matters of fact than he does when speaking of the resurrection of Christ. Rightly or wrongly he stakes the whole thing on a fact connected by innumerable links with other facts when he says:"If Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ whom He raised not up. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." Spirituality separated from the natural body of fact which God has prepared for it would soon become a sickly thing, and in a generation or two would die out altogether. When we try to improve on God's ways we generally end in spoiling our own, and we shall spoil both His and ours if we treat with neglect that long line of historic fact which culminates in the Incarnation of the Son of God. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. To Him gave all the Prophets witness, and the history with which. their words are incorporated is certified by a growing cloud of witnesses. These witnesses come from sculptured tombs and buried mounds, from lands remote and ages far apart, and once more in these modern days they declare the ancient testimony-" All flesh is as grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you."

VI.

THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION.

It is perhaps difficult for a Christian minister to undertake, as I propose to do, to speak of the Bible and the modern theory of Evolution without a sort of half-suspicion coming into some minds that he is about to assail modern science on the one hand and put forth some special pleading for the Bible on the other. I will try to do neither of these things, for I have a very strong feeling that neither of them is at all necessary. It is quite true that sometimes Christian advocates, neither very wise nor very learned, have risen up against the scientific spirit of our time and assailed it in a way which was some excuse for Mr. Huxley's retort, "That it was enough to make one think that the first theologian was Cain, and Abel the first man of science." Still, on the other hand, I think even Mr. Huxley would admit that scientific men have not always kept to their own rightful ground, that they have displayed other qualities than the meekness of the dove, and have shown that they are very well able to take care of themselves in the word battles of our time. There really is no need for any bitterness on the one side or on the other. Truth is but one, and every living man is interested in getting at the truth. The Christian may thankfully hail the worker in science as a brother in the search for the clue to the mystery of this wonderful world. For our fixed and certain belief is that both worlds-that of spirit and that of matter, have come from one hand, and

rightly understood, the truth in one realm will never really contradict the truth in the other. Nay, is it not even more true to say that rightly looked at they are not really two realms, but one. We may for convenience sake separate them in thought, but there is such a necessary and close relation between them, such a vital interaction that if a man is wrong about one he is to that extent prevented from rightly understanding the other. If the scientific man is wise he will not undervalue the spiritual facts of the universe which are as real as the material facts, neither ought the spiritual thinker to ignore the established conclusions of the material worker.

It is not against well-ascertained facts that any wise man can have any battle. He may sometimes have very good cause to show against the speculations which have been based on the facts, but not against the facts themselves. And like the rest of us the man of science must consent to have his conclusions tried and tested in the great world of thought. We will listen to him respectfully when he is telling us what he has found out about light and sound, motion and structure, and as he follows matter through all the changes through which he has seen it go. But when he passes beyond his facts and speculates about improved theories of creation, deals with the essence of matter or the nature of mind, or the origin of life, then we quietly remind him that that is no more his ground than it is ours. Any sensible man can reason, compare, and decide, can judge of the relations of things, and their tendencies. All these questions must come into the open and be determined there. This is our only security, for there may be a fashion about science as about other things, and more than once a man has been out of the fashion without being out of the truth.

The great questions of religious belief cannot be permitted to be settled by mere authority any more than the questions of science. It has become too common to set aside

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well-founded convictions, not by facts, but by such formulæ as these "All competent judges are now agreed," "Every educated person is aware that those best qualified to judge are of opinion," Science teaches us" so and so. We take leave to say that this is not science, but a new intellectual tyranny sought to be imposed upon us by men who are never weary of extolling intellectual liberty. I am not of course saying that on matters of fact and research one man's opinion is as good as another's. Sensible men will always respect and give weight to the judgment of a specialist in his own department. But the questions eagerly debated in our time are far too broad and deep for any man to be regarded a specialist concerning them. Indeed specialists have need, perhaps, to be on their guard more than other men when they leave their speciality. A rigorous scientific training, admirable as it is, may so narrow a man to one line of things as positively to disqualify him for estimating truth in those broader regions where science touches history in one direction, metaphysics in another, and morals in a third.

So much I am disposed to say by way of preparation for the line of thought before us. Though proposing to refer to scientific matters my purpose is distinctly spiritual. As far as I can I want to deal with a sort of vague, widespread misgiving that things have been discovered by men of science which really shake the ancient faith in a personal Father, whose wisdom plans and whose power sustains the world, and therefore shake with it the feeling of personal responsibility of living men to the God of their life. It is not merely that this or that branch of Christian evidences has been assailed, but that the air is heavy with doubts as to whether we have a Father, as to whether we and all things round us have not been evolved from dead matter by blind forces which have been working for countless ages from some far-off germ or cell through all the gradations of animal life up to man himself. And what I propose to do

now, or to attempt to do, is to take the one question of Evolution as being thought to be vital and central in respect to Bible truth, and show its limits as a theory, what it has done, and what confessedly it has not done. Let us try to clear the ground and see just where we are.

When we look at Evolution historically we find that it is comparatively an old idea in a new-fashioned dress. It was introduced into biological writings in the first half of the seventeenth century by Malpighi, and applied physiologically by Bonnet and Haller. But the true founder of the doctrine was Leibnitz. He it was who by the law of continuity, by his theory of insensible perceptions, by his principle of the infinitely little first set up this theory in a learned and profound manner. It was he who said"The present is big with the future." It should be borne in mind however, that Leibnitz never opposed the theory of Evolution to the theory of a Final Cause. He held that in the tendency to pass from one state to another, all internal change of substance was governed by the principle of an End proposed. But though the word and the theory go back to earlier times than ours the publication of Mr. Darwin's book on the Origin of Species in 1859 was really the one thing that started the modern discussions on the subject. With a rapidity almost unexampled in the history of speculation this book was accepted and made the basis of other books, and its theory the basis of other theories both in England and on the continent. There was a wonderful charm about it, and one can never forget the first reading of it. Deeply interesting facts in natural history given by a careful observer, descriptions of beautiful experiments carried on by a master, won for it a place apart from the soundness or otherwise of the theory of life which it sets forth.

Put very briefly, it started this idea, that the forms of living plants and animals were not created just as we see them, but that there was a gradual progress from the

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