thus stated it as honestly as I can, I should like to finish
by further stating what, in my opinion is its logical bearing upon the
more fundamental tenets of religious thought.

As I have already observed at the commencement of this brief exposition,
prior to the Darwinian theory of organic evolution, the theologian was
prone to point to the realm of organic nature as furnishing a peculiarly
rich and virtually endless store of facts, all combining in their
testimony to the wisdom and the beneficence of the Deity. Innumerable
adaptations of structures to functions appeared to yield convincing
evidence in favour of design; the beauty so profusely shed by living
forms appeared to yield evidence, no less convincing, of that design as
beneficent. But both these sources of evidence have now, as it were,
been tapped at their fountain-head: the adaptation and the beauty are
alike receiving their explanation at the hands of a purely mechanical
philosophy. Nay, even the personality of man himself is assailed; and
this not only in the features which he shares with the lower animals,
but also in his god-like attributes of reason, thought, and conscience.
All nature has thus been transformed before the view of the present
generation in a manner and to an extent that has never before been
possible: and inasmuch as the change which has taken place has taken
place in the direction of naturalism, and this to the extent of
rendering the mechanical interpretation of nature universal, it is no
wonder if the religious mind has suddenly awakened to a new and a
terrible force in the words of its traditional enemy--Where is now thy
God?

This is not the place to discuss the bearings of science on
religion[51]; but I think it is a place where one may properly point out
the limits within which no such bearings obtain. Now, from what has just
been said, it will be apparent that I am not going to minimise the
change which has been wrought. On the contrary, I believe it is only
stupidity or affectation which can deny that the change in question is
more deep and broad than any single previous change in the whole history
of human thought. It is a fundamental, a cosmical, a world-transforming
change. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is a change of a non-theistic,
as distinguished from an a-theistic, kind. It has rendered impossible
the appearance in literature of any future Paley, Bell, or Chalmers; but
it has done nothing in the way of negativing t