a blaze against the naturalists is furnished by the advent of Darwinism. The recollection is still fresh of the anathemas which the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man provoked. How far the different sorts of animals and other organized beings are bound together by a genetic connection is still an open question; although the traditional beliefs as to the origin of these various divisions may be said to have dropped, for the most part, from the scientific creed. Even if species come into being by descent, it is problematical whether the doctrine of natural selection is a solvent of so great power as the Darwinian form of the evolution-hypothesis has maintained. But the bearings of Darwinism, in the shape in which its author propounded it, upon theism and Christian belief, are now well understood. It has been abundantly shown that it leaves the being and attributes of God, as Christians conceive of them, untouched. Speculations of Darwin pertaining to the origin of the mind and of the moral faculty may wear a threatening look. But these are a subordinate part of the Darwinian discussion; and it should not be lightly assumed that even these, of necessity, clash with the Christian idea of man as a spiritual and responsible creature. A preacher of so high a type of ecclesiasticism, and of an orthodoxy so stainless, as Dean Liddell, tells us, in a sermon preached since Darwin was entombed, that the theory which has made his name famous carries in it no antagonism to the creed of a Christian. The conflict about which there has been so great a noise is pronounced to be unreal. If this be so, then the guns of a myriad pulpits have been turned upon a man of straw.

The causes of the attitude of intolerance which has frequently been taken by religious men towards new

opinions in natural science are multiple. There is, first, the customary impatience of new truth, or of new doctrine which stands in opposition to cherished ideas, -ideas that have long had a quiet lodgement in the mind. This species of conservatism is far from being peculiar to theologians or to the religious class: it belongs to other classes of human beings as well, and is manifested equally in connection with other beliefs. Innovators in politics, or in these very sciences which have to do with the material world, are very apt to be confronted with resistance-often with stubborn and angry resistance-from people engaged in the same pursuits. Few ministers expressed a more unsparing antipathy to Darwinism than Agassiz, the apostle of a different zoological system. The path which scientific discoverers have to tread, apart from the religious and ecclesiastical jealousies which they are liable to awaken, is not apt to be a smooth one. The odium theologicum is only one specific form of a more generic odium which vents itself in learned scientific bodies and in the controversial papers of rival schools of savans. It would seem as if men come at length to look on their established opinions as a piece of property, and upon all who seem disposed to deprive them of this agreeable possession as thieves and robbers. Fanaticism may be kindled in behalf of any cause or creed with which personal feeling has become associated, or with which intellectual pride has irrevocably become involved. Hence every important revolution in scientific opinion. has succeeded, not without a conflict with the adherents of the traditional view, an internecine war amor.g

the cultivators of science themselves.

Then, secondly, religious faith, as it exists in almost every mind, is habitually associated with beliefs errone

ously supposed to be implicated in it. Beyond the truth itself on which a man really lives, there is a mass of connected belief, which not one out of a hundred, to speak moderately, either attempts to dissever from it, or imagines it possible to dissever. To disconnect this accretion of secondary beliefs, be they well founded or ill founded, from that which is vital, it is tacitly taken for granted, is out of the question. That which would remain after the amputation it is silently assumed would bleed to death. It is only the few disciplined and rigorously logical minds who approximate closely to a perception of what is and what is not vital to a doctrine or a system. Such a discrimination is seldom made with any high degree of accuracy. Hence one may think that his life is threatened when the surgeon's knife is lopping off an excrescence, or is removing a member the loss of which leaves the body with undiminished or increased vigor. Religious beliefs, in the average mind, are so interwoven with one another, as the mere effect of association, where there may be no necessary bond of union, that, where one of them is assailed, the whole are thought to be in danger. Time was, when a belief in witchcraft was held by many to be an articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiæ. Even John Wesley expresses this opinion, or something equivalent. It was a belief that had existed so long, it had been adopted and practised on by so many of the bad and good, it was judged to be so recognized in the Scrip tures, it entered so intimately into the accepted mode of conceiving of supernatural agents, that the loss of it out of the faith of a Christian was felt to be like a displacement of a stone from the arch: it would lead to the downfall of the whole structure. The old Greeks held that the stars were severally the abode of deific

beings: they were animated and moved by intelligences. Plato and Aristotle were not delivered from this way of thinking. When a man like Anaxagoras said that the sun was a stone, the entire theological edifice was felt to be menaced with overthrow. Men did not at once discern that atheism did not follow. They did not see that a belief either in one God, or in gods many or lords many, might still subsist, and subsist just as well, wher the traditional tenet which personified the stars had been relinquished. It is a matter of daily experience to witness a vociferous opposition to the introduction of some new mode of conceiving of a religious truth, or of defending it, where the motive of the imbittered outcry is a misconception of the effect of the opinion in question upon the substance of religious belief. The disposition "to multiply essentials " good Richard Baxter considered the bane of the Church, the prolific source of intolerance and division. The tendency to identify accident with substance, the failure to discern the core of a truth from its integuments, is at the root of much of the rash and unreasoning and vehement resistance that has been offered in past times to the advances of natural science.

In adverting to the occasions of conflict between persons specially interested in religious truth, and students of natural science, there is one other observation to he made, to which it is well for theologians to give hecd. The ground is often practically taken, and sometimes avowedly, taht the views relative to the teaching of Scripture respecting the material world, both as to its meaning and authority, which have come down to us, we ought to cling to until we are forced to abandon them. The maxim is to part with the traditional opinions on this topic only when the concession is extorted

by evidence no longer to be withstood. Never yield an inch of ground until it is found impossible to hold it. This way of viewing the subject is wholly unscientific, and unworthy of theology, if theology would keep its place as a science. It rests on a false assumption respecting the rightful relation of religion to the studies of nature. It is mischievous, it is hurtful to the cause of religion. It is in fact, in its proper tendency, suici· dal. It is unscientific, in the first place. If the prog ress of natural science has taught in repeated instances, and taught impressively, that the traditional views taken of the Scriptures contain error, the aim should be to eliminate that error, and to do it, if possible, forthwith, and not wait to receive blow after blow. Some new canon of interpretation should be found which places the reader of the Bible above the reach of these rude disturbances of his belief. If this is found impracticable, if it is found that fair interpretation, without any such strain as offends the critical sense and the ethical sense as well, fails to set the scriptural expressions in harmony with the ascertained results of inductive science, then let the inspiration-dogma be revised. Let the theory relative to the authority of Scripture be formulated in accordance with the facts. Our position is, that it is unworthy of the Church to stand idle and passive, but prepared to give up one point after another as it may find itself obliged to do so. This is virtually the position which many would assume. They stand waiting for some new demand from natural science, stand shivering, perhaps, lest they should be stripped of another inherited view respecting the world and the way in which it was made. The proper course for the thinkers of the Church to take is to anticipate the demands of natural science,