do not have the habit of prayer,
and therefore is so far the best weapon in the struggle for existence; and
herein lies the truth of religion, especially of the Christian religion, as
the most successful weapon in the struggle for existence which takes place
through the whole creation, from the lowest organisms up to the highest
spiritual life of mankind.

We willingly admit that Christianity has certainly proved itself by far the
strongest and most successful means of education to mankind, and that, if
we must once express this experience in the Darwinian mode of speaking, we
can express it as above. But with the attempt to make the _truth_ of
religion and the truth of its contents, even if only subjective, dependent
only and solely upon the proof of its _usefulness_, nobody, either friend
or foe, will be satisfied. The adversaries of religion and Christianity,
perhaps with the exception of Buechner, will admit that Christianity has for
some {216} time been a quite useful weapon to mankind in the struggle for
existence; but they will say that they are just about to replace it by a
still more useful weapon; and the advocates of religion and Christianity
likewise can not agree upon a mere grounding of their religion upon need
which puts upon them every day the possibility of changing it for something
still more useful. Both friend and foe will join in the conviction that
objective truth is always the best guarantee for subjective success; and
thus both will pass beyond the purely utilitarian apologetics or polemics
to the questions as to the objective reality of the contents of Christian
religiousness.

* * * * * {217}

CHAPTER III.

PEACE BETWEEN RELIGION AND DARWINISM.

Sec. 1. _Darwin, Wallace, R. Owen, Asa Gray, Mivart, McCosh, Anderson, K. E.
v. Baer, Alex. Braun, Braubach, etc._

It still remains for us to take a glance at those who think religion and
Darwinism, and Christianity and Darwinism, hold toward one another
reciprocally amicable relations.

In the first place, we have to mention Darwin himself. In his earliest
work, "Origin of Species," he repeatedly gives this opinion, as on page
421: "I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock
the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how
transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery
ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also