unaffected; nor do thinking young people, as a rule, open their minds to parents or pastors. But, on the most generous interpretation of the recent census of worshippers, there are yet at least three-fourths of our adult population unaccounted for. These latter are certainly not avowed agnostics; nor is their attitude towards Christianity in general definitely antagonistic. But they constitute precisely the soil in which such sowing of popular 'rationalism,' under scientific guise, is likely to bear fruit. There are abundant evidences, for those who decline to close their eyes, that such fruit is not lacking. Nor is there anything either specially wise or Christian in persistently ignoring the undeniable influences of the modern atmosphere, or thinking that these all will right themselves if only 'let severely alone.'

It is no doubt partly true that Haeckel is 'outof-date.' There are good reasons for the estimate recently expressed by Sir Oliver Lodge:

Professor Haeckel's voice is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer of an advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his comrades, as they march to new orders in a fresh direction. 1

This may of course be challenged on the ground that the purely scientific basis of Haeckel's monism is most modern. Yet it is just as possible to be unscientific by excess as by defect. And there is certainly no warrant in present-day science for the confidence with which this 'system' prophesies. It builds even more largely upon the future filling in of

Hibbert Journal, January, 1905, p. 324.

'gaps' than theology does upon their past existence. Whereas all we now know is that evolution has come to stay, and that the completeness of the sweep of its application, upon which Haeckel's monism so continually insists, is becoming more and more pronouncedly the dictum of some leading men of science.

Professor Haeckel would no doubt reply to some of the above criticism, that he is not only a man of science, but a philosopher; that he is looking ahead, beyond ascertained fact; and that it is his philosophic views which are in question, rather than his scientific statements. If that is clearly understood, I am perfectly content.1

So says, truly enough, Sir Oliver Lodge. But unfortunately it is precisely this which is not 'clearly understood.' It is far from easy for the ordinary reader to distinguish between philosophy and science. The latter being confessedly up-to-date, it is a natural conclusion for the man in the street that the accompanying inferences are both modern and reliable. Nor is it of much avail-at all events, for those who desire to conserve and emphasize Christian convictions-to affirm that the most recent and apparently growing tendency of philosophic thought is rather in the direction of educing matter from spirit than spirit from matter. For this, unless most carefully guarded, leads by the simplest of short cuts directly to pantheism. Such an issue would suit Professor Haeckel and his friends exactly. He stoutly affirms that

The charge of atheism, which still continues to be levelled against our pantheism and against the monism which lies at

1 Hibbert Journal, p. 323.

its root, no longer finds a response among the really educated classes of the present day. The monistic idea of God, which alone is compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognizes the divine spirit in all things.1

Moreover, if reference be made to the validity of religious experience, as a scientific fact of unimpeachable significance, the psychologist who is most. often quoted with admiring respect as an authority herein assures us not only that he is unable to accept either 'popular Christianity '-whatever that may mean-or scholastic theism, but that belief in God and personal immortality are quite secondary matters.

In the interests of intellectual clearness, I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something out-larger than ourselves, and in that union find our greatest peace. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, and it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves of different degrees of inclusiveness, with no abstract unity realized in it at all. Thus would a sort of polytheism return upon us. I think, in fact, that a final philosophy of religion will have to consider the pluralistic hypothesis more seriously than it has been willing to consider it."

Such sentiments will doubtless be unacceptable to the followers of Professor Haeckel. But they bring also cold comfort to all those who, in the name of his monism, are bidden stand and deliver up every

1 Confession of Faith, pp. 80-7.

2 Varieties of Religious Experience, Professor Wm. James, p. 525.

thing they have previously held to be as true as precious in Christian theism.

From all the foregoing it is fairly manifest that the comfortable assurance-by no means uncommon in the Churches-that' Haeckel does not count' is, as already intimated, only an infatuation of the same order as the reported practice of the pursued ostrich. The mood of faith which, in these respects, cannot see the wood for the trees is not one recommended in the New Testament, nor does it promise well for coming generations. It is both childish and unworthy to assume that all unbelievers must be either feeble-minded or evil-hearted. The names, for instance, of those who constitute the working associates of the Rationalist Press Association-as appended to the English translation of Professor Haeckel's latest work-are those of men meriting the utmost intellectual respect. Their efforts, proceeding from sincere conviction, will certainly neither cease nor become ineffectual by reason of any papers read, or any resolutions passed, at an Anglican Congress or a Methodist Conference. However much one may differ from the findings of Mr. McCabe, or regret the acerbity of his championship of atheistic monism, there is no more reason to question the acuteness of his mind than the integrity of his purpose.

The strenuousness of the opposition to Haeckel's views in his own land, and even amongst his own University colleagues, is unknown in this country, because the reviews and pamphlets in which it is

embodied have not found translation into English. Several of these, however, well merit such translation, nor is it too much to affirm that, so far as Haeckel's philosophy is concerned, apart from his science, they sufficiently dispose of the hollowness of its large pretensions.1

It must be candidly acknowledged that most of these are as far from what is termed 'evangelical religion' as Haeckel himself. Even the theologians Drs. Loofs and Nippold would not be accounted 'orthodox' in our midst. So that their vigorous onslaught upon the Welträtsel, though manifestly

Professor Haeckel himself, in the 'Nachwort' attached to the latest popular edition of his Welträtsel, takes notice of five of these in summary reply. These five, with one equally worth careful study, which he does not mention, are as follows: Philosophia militans, gegen Klerikalismus und Naturalismus, von Friedrich Paulsen (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard); Kant contra Haeckel, Erkenntnisstheorie gegen naturwissenschaftlichen Dogmatismus, von Dr. Erich Adickes (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard); Die naturwissenschaftliche Methode in ihrer Anwendung auf die Religionsgeschichte, von Friedrich Nippold (Berlin, 1901); Anti-Haeckel, eine replik nebst Beilagen, von Dr. Friedrich Loofs (Halle) [this has been rendered into English, and is published by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton]; Die Wahrheit über Ernst Haeckel und seine Welträtsel, von Dr. E. Dennert (Halle: S. E. Muller; Probleme kritische Studien über den Monismus, von Dr. H. v. Schoeler (Leipzig: W. W. Engelman).

2 Whilst the exposure by Dr. Loofs of Haeckel's pitiful seventeenth chapter, on 'Science and Christianity,' is as richly deserved as it is thorough, the general tone of this polemic is certainly to be regretted as a specimen of Christian defence. And in regard to Professor Nippold, although Haeckel estimates him as one der unter allen Gegnern der Welträtsel nicht nur den höflichsten und versöhnlichsten Ton anschlägt, sondern auch am eingehendsten und ehrlichsten seine abweichenden Ansichten zu begründen sucht,' yet he also records that his Antrittsrede,' when he succeeded to the chair of Professor Carl Hase, die grosses Aufsehen unter seinen theologischen Kollegen und lebhaften Beifall unter seinen Kollegen anderer Fakultaten erregte.'