were too strong to be ignored, and religion had
to modify its teaching by at least a passive acceptance of the new
world outlook which would have been so strange to Jesus and Paul. It
is evident that this involves the quiet giving up of the truth of the
story of creation, as well as the doctrine of a day of judgment. When
we once realize that the earth is a pin-point in the physical universe,
these stories, woven in days when it was regarded as the stable center
of things, are seen to be outgrown myths.

But astronomy was followed by biology with its hypothesis of evolution.
No sooner had religion resigned itself to a larger world than its peace
was again broken by the teaching that man was the end-term of an
evolution of animal life going far back into the dim past. Instead of
the neat little tale which Hebrew literature had passed on to the
Church, men were asked to believe that ages of slow change had elapsed
while one form of life changed to a more complex form adapted to new
conditions. Soon facts rained in from all sides to make this new
position impregnable. Geology studied the various strata of rock and
found fossil remains which could only be dated back millions of years.
Strange creatures unlike those to be found now upon the earth were
brought to light. Reptiles of monstrous size, fishes of strange
shapes, huge trees resembling our ferns, botanically weeds, yet
towering into the heavens, were unearthed until the imagination caught
glimpses of past ages teeming with life. The teaching of geology was
reenforced by comparative anatomy, which showed {105} the similarity of
different animals which had been thought of as quite distinct. Man,
himself, was examined and was found to contain traces of an older mode
of life. Only in this way could certain atrophied organs, like the
appendix, be understood. Before long, comparative embryology arose and
it was seen that the embryo passes through certain stages of
development which roughly indicate the past life of the organism. On
all lines, investigation taught the same conclusion. That there was
evolution in nature, so that new forms of life developed while old
forms passed away, no one who knew the facts doubted. What factors
were at work to produce these changes was not entirely known. The new
outlook was set in the place of the old myths; but the details of the
evolutionary process required careful working out by patient
experiments and observations.