tnote 1: In the Introduction to his well-known book, "Natural Law in
the Spiritual World."]

Religionists, on the other hand, imagining, however wrongly, that the
erroneous extension was part of the true scientific doctrine, attacked
the whole without discrimination.

While such a misapprehension existed, it was inevitable that writers
anxious alike for the dignity of science and the maintenance of
religion, should step in to point out the error, and effect a
reconciliation of claims which really were never in conflict.

It is hardly the fault of "religionists" that it was at first supposed
that one _could_ not hold the doctrine of evolution without denying a
"special" creation and a designing Providence. It was on this very
natural supposition that the first leading attack--attributed to the
Bishop of Oxford--proceeded. And the writer fell into the equally
natural mistake of taking advantage of the uncompleted and unproved
state of the theory at the time, to attack the theory itself, instead of
keeping to the safer ground, namely, that whatever might ultimately be
the conclusion of evolutionists, it was quite certain that no theory of
evolution that at all coincided with the known facts, offered any ground
for argument against the existence of an Intelligent Lawgiver and First
Cause of all; nor did it tend in the slightest to show that no such
thing as creative design and providence existed in the course of nature.

What the discovery of evolution really did, was to necessitate a
revision of the hitherto popularly accepted and generally assumed and
unquestioned notion of what _creation_ was. And it has long appeared to
me, that while now the most thoroughgoing advocates of evolution
generally admit that their justly cherished doctrine has nothing to say
to the existence of a Creator, or to the possibility of design--which
may be accepted or denied on other grounds--the writers on the side of
Christianity have not sufficiently recognized the change which their
views ought to undergo.

As long as this is the case, there will continue to be a certain
"conflict," not indeed between science and religion, but of the kind
which has been vividly depicted by the late Dr. Draper.

It can scarcely have escaped the notice of the most ordinary reader
that, in the course of that interesting work, the author has very little
to say about religion--at any rate about religion in any proper sense of
the term. The conflict was betwe