pecies';
and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many
fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt: _Can_ the mind
of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low
as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such
grand conclusions?

"I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems.
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for
one must be content to remain an Agnostic."

A careful reading of the above discloses the gradual transition wrought
in Darwin himself by the unsupported hypothesis which he launched upon
the world, or which he endorsed with such earnestness and industry as
to impress his name upon it He was regarded as "_orthodox_" when he was
young; he was even laughed at for quoting the Bible "_as an unanswerable
authority on some point of morality_." In the beginning he regarded
himself as a Theist and felt compelled "to look to a First Cause, having
an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man."

This conclusion, he says, was strong in his mind when he wrote "The
Origin of Species," but he observes that since that time this conclusion
very gradually became _weaker_, and then he unconsciously brings a
telling indictment against his own hypothesis. He says, "_Can the mind
of man_ (which, according to his belief, has been _developed from a mind
as low as that possessed by the lowest animals) be trusted when it draws
such grand conclusions_?" He first links man with the animals, and then,
because of this _supposed_ connection, estimates man's mind by brute
standards. Agnosticism is the natural attitude of the evolutionist. How
can a brute mind comprehend spiritual things? It makes a tremendous
difference what a man thinks about his origin whether he looks up or
down. Who will say, after reading these words, that it is immaterial
what man thinks about his origin? Who will deny that the acceptance of
the Darwinian hypothesis shuts out the higher reasonings and the larger
conceptions of man?

On the very brink of the grave, after he had extracted from his
hypothesis all the good that there was in it and all the benefit that it
could confer, he is helplessly in the dark, and "cannot pretend to throw
the least light on such abstruse problems." When he believed in God, in
the Bible, in Christ and in a future life there were no mysteries that
disturbed him, but a _guess_ with nothi