that from the beginning He
has never forgotten His children.

LECTURE VI.

APPARENT COLLISION BETWEEN RELIGION AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.

Evolution examined. The formation of the habitable world. The formation
of the creatures which inhabit it. Transmission of characteristics.
Variations perpetually introduced. Natural selection. On the other side,
life not yet accounted for by Evolution. Cause of variations not yet
examined. Moral Law incapable of being evolved. Account given in Genesis
not at variance with doctrine of Evolution. Evolution of man not
inconsistent with dignity of humanity.

LECTURE VI.

APPARENT COLLISION BETWEEN RELIGION AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.

'Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and
not we ourselves.' _Psalm_ c. 3.

Religion is rooted in our spiritual nature and its fundamental truths
are as independent of experience for their hold on our consciences as
the truths of mathematics for their hold on our reason.

But as a matter of fact Religion has taken the form of a revelation. And
this introduces a new contact between Religion and Science, and of
necessity a new possibility of collision. There is not only possible
opposition or apparent opposition of Science in what is revealed, in
what we may call the actual substance of the revelation; but also in the
accessories and evidences of the revelation, which may be no actual part
of the revelation itself, but nevertheless are, to all appearance,
inseparably bound up with it. It is therefore no more than might have
been expected that the general postulate of the uniformity of nature
should appear to be contravened by the claim to supernatural power made
on behalf of revelation, and that the special, but just at present
leading scientific doctrine, the doctrine of Evolution, should be found
inconsistent with parts, or what appear to be parts, of the revelation
itself. And we have to consider the two questions, What has Revelation
to say concerning Evolution? and what has Science to say concerning
Miracles?

Concerning Evolution, we have first to consider how much in this
direction has been made fairly probable, and what still remains to be
determined.

It cannot then be well denied that the astronomers and geologists have
made it exceedingly probable that this earth on which we live has been
brought to its present condition by passing through a succession of
changes from an origin