it alone carries in itself the promise and potentiality of eternal life! Certainly in it only is the potentiality of religion, or that which aspires to immortality.

Here I should close; but, in justice to myself and to you, a word must still be added. You rightly will say that, although theism is at the foundation of religion, the foundation is of small practical value without the superstructure. Your supreme interest is Christianity; and you ask me if I maintain that the doctrine of evolution is compatible with this. I am bound to do so. Yet I have left myself no time in which to vindicate my claim; which I should wish to do most earnestly, yet very deferentially, considering where and to whom I speak. Here we reverse positions: you are the professional experts; I am the unskilled inquirer.

I accept Christianity on its own evidence, which I am not here to specify or to justify; and I am yet to learn how physical or any other science conflicts with it any more than it conflicts with simple theism. I take it that religion is based on the idea of a Divine Mind revealing himself to intelligent creatures for moral ends.

We shall perhaps agree that the revelation on which our religion is based is an example of evolution; that it has been developed by degrees and in stages, much of it in connection with second causes and human actions; and that the current of revelation has been mingled with the course of events. I suppose that the Old Testament carried the earlier revelation and the germs of Christianity, as the apostles carried the treasures of the gospel, in earthen vessels. I trust it is reverent, I am confident it is safe and wise, to consider that revelation in its essence concerns things moral and spiritual; and that the knowledge of God's character and will which has descended from the fountainhead in the earlier ages has come down to us, through annalists and prophets and psalmists, in a mingled stream, more or less tinged or rendered turbid by the earthly channels through which it has worn its way. The stream brings down precious gold, and so may be called a golden stream; but the water-the vehicle of transportation-is not gold. Moreover the analogy of our inquiry into design in Nature may teach us that we may be unable always accurately to sift out the gold from the earthy sediment.

But, however we may differ in regard to the earlier stages of religious development, we shall agree in this, that revelation culminated, and for us most essentially consists, in the advent of a Divine Person, who, being made man, manifested the Divine Nature in union with the human; and that this manifestation constitutes Christianity.

Having accepted the doctrine of the incarnation, itself the crowning miracle, attendant miracles are not obstacles to belief.

Their

primary use must have been for those who witnessed them; and we may allow that the record of a miracle cannot have the convincing force of the miracle itself. But the very reasons on which scientific men reject miracles for the carrying on of Nature may operate in favor of miracles to attest an incoming of the supernatural for moral ends. At least they have nothing to declare against them.

If now you ask me, What are the essential contents of that Christianity which is in my view as compatible with my evolutionary conceptions as with former scientific beliefs, it may suffice to answer that they are briefly summed up in the early creeds of the Christian Church, reasonably interpreted. The creeds to be taken

into account are only two,-one commonly called the Apostles', the other the Nicene. The latter and larger is remarkable for its complete avoidance of conflict with physical science. The language in which its users "look for the resurrection of the dead" bears and doubtless at it's adoption had in the minds of at least some of the council- a worthier interpretation than that naturally suggested by the short western creed, namely, the crude notion of the revivification of the human body, against which St. Paul earnestly protested.

Moreover, as brethren uniting in a common worship, we may honorably, edifyingly, and wisely use that which we should not have formulated, but may on due occasion qualify, statements, for instance, dogmatically pronouncing upon the essential nature of the Supreme Being (of which nothing can be known and nothing is revealed), instead of the Divine manifestation. We may add more to our confession: we all of us draw more from the exhaustless revelation of Christ in the gospels; but this should suffice for the profession of Christianity. If you ask, must we require that, .I reply that I am merely stating what I accept. Whoever else will accept Him who is

himself the substance of Christianity, let him do it in his own way.

In conclusion, we students of natural science and of theology have very similar tasks. Nature is a complex, of which the human race through investigation is learning more and more the meaning and the uses. The Scriptures are a complex, an accumulation of a long series of records, which are to be well understood only by investigation. It cannot be that in all these years we have learned nothing new of their meaning and uses to us, and have nothing still to learn. Nor can it be that we are not free to use what we learn in one line of study to limit, correct, or remodel the ideas which we obtain from another.

Gentlemen of the Theological School, about to become ministers of the gospel, receive this discourse with full allowance for the different point of view from which we survey the field. If I, in my solicitude to attract scientific men to religion, be thought to have minimized the divergence of certain scientific from religious beliefs, I pray that you on the other hand will never needlessly exaggerate them; for that may be more harmful. I am persuaded that you, in

your day, will enjoy the comfort of a much better understanding between the scientific and the religious mind than has prevailed. Yet without doubt a full share of intellectual and traditional difficulties will fall to your lot. Discreetly to deal with them, as well for yourselves as for those who may look to you for guidance, rightly to present sensible and sound doctrine both to the learned and the ignorant, the lowly and the lofty-minded, the simple believer and the astute speculatist, you will need all the knowledge and judgment you can acquire from science and philosophy, and all the superior wisdom your supplications may draw from the Infinite Source of knowledge, wisdom, and grace.