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of evolution on a scientific basis," sets out with "the assumption of a limited mass of homogeneous matter, acted upon by incident forces." Professor Huxley ("Critiques and Addresses") says that the fundamental proposition of evolution is

that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules, of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed.

In the words of Principal Dawson, it is a hypothesis

which solves the question of human origin by assuming that human nature exists potentially in mere inorganic matter, and that a chain of spontaneous derivation connects incandescent molecules or stardust with the world and with man himself ("“The Earth and Man," pp. 316-317).

There are very many difficulties in this theory. These, however, do not prove it false. They simply postpone its acceptance. One serious difficulty lies in the very fact of this postponement. When a question has been fairly before the world for hundreds of years, and when the ablest minds in three

most recent generations of scientific men have been devoted to its investigation, and yet so little approach is made to unanimity, men practically say that there must be some latent but powerful vice in the reasoning by which it is upheld.

III. NEITHER A RELIGIOUS NOR SENTIMENTAL QUESTION.

IT is to be observed that all the difficulties of evolution have a scientific basis. There is no religious reason for its acceptance or rejection.

Professor Francis L. Patton (Presbyterian Review, January, 1885) has shown that it is not evolution in its scientific aspect so much, but rather the metaphysical supplement of evolution, that is specially hostile to the Gospel.

Sir William Thomson, the eminent English scientist, refuses to accept the doctrine of evolution, not because it would interfere with his religious belief, but simply because it is wholly unproved. Dr. Field, of the Evangelist, reports him as saying:

That man could be evolved out of inferior animals is the wildest dream of materialism, a pure assumption, which offended him alike by its folly and its arrogance.

One theory of evolution does not touch the question of origin. It simply describes a process of development. It is easy to conceive a man believing in God the Father Almighty while holding that that God originally created a single cell, or monad, or molecule, and endowed it with all potencies, so that it might grow into all there now is in the universe. At a meeting in Boston, September 11, 1882, Professor Gray, who is known as a follower of Darwin, is reported to have presented the following views :

Nature is either the outcome of mind, or mind is the outcome of nature. These are the only alternatives. The former has been more commonly held, at least till the beginning of the present generation. The question is, Has modern science proved the contrary? No. In response to the question, however, the naturalists have said not a little. They have presented many facts which help to make an But the present demand is for the theologians to tell us what they think. I, for one, do not believe that, after the matter has been thoroughly

answer.

sifted, the grounds of our faith in Jesus Christ are to be materially affected. The cause of Christianity will not suffer at the hands of physical science. We may be obliged to recast certain beliefs, but we may still be good Christians, and accept the religion of Christ as contained in the four Gospels.

He has since published his views in two lectures delivered to the Theological School of Yale College.

Professor Winchell is an able evolutionist of a certain school, and yet in the Homiletic Review, August, 1885, says: "What are natural things? Existences which have been brought into being by some superhuman power." All through his able writings Professor Winchell manifests his intelligent Christianity; but he is an evolutionist.

It may be added that Mivart, the celebrated English scientist, an earnest Roman Catholic, is a theistic evolutionist.

Even Professor Huxley (" Critiques and Addresses," p. 274) says:

The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutally exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phe

nomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe.

Dr. McCosh, the President of Princeton College, made the following assertions in an address before the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance:

It is useless to tell the younger naturalists that there is no truth in the doctrine of development, for they know that there is truth which is not to be set aside by denunciation. Religious philosophers might be more profitably employed in showing them the religious aspects of the doctrine of development; and some would be grateful to any who would help them to keep their old faith in God and the Bible with their new faith in science.

Again, in his book on "Development," Dr. McCosh says:

It is no use denying in our day the doctrine of evolution, in the name of religion or any good cause. It can now be shown that it rather favors religions by its furnishing proofs of design, and by the wonderful parallelism between Genesis and geology.

The following are the words of Professor George I. Chace, LL.D., an eminent Chris

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