eriences a doctrine of uniformity
which is only valid in the region of abstract science. For every
science depends for its advance upon limitation of attention, upon the
selection out of the whole content of consciousness of that part or
aspect which is measurable by the method of the science. Accordingly
there is a science of life which rightly displays the unity underlying
all its manifestations. But there is another view of life, equally
valid, and practically sometimes more important, which recognises the
immediate and lasting effect of crisis, difference, and revolution.
Our ardour for the demonstration of uniformity of process and of
minute continuous change needs to be balanced by a recognition of the
catastrophic element in experience, and also by a recognition of the
exceptional significance for us of events which may be perfectly
regular from an impersonal point of view.

An exorbitant jealousy of miracle, revelation, and ultimate moral
distinctions has been imported from evolutionary science into
religious thought. And it has been a damaging influence, because it
has taken men's attention from facts, and fixed them upon theories.

II

With this acknowledgment of important drawbacks, requiring many words
for their proper description, I proceed to indicate certain results of
Darwin's doctrine which I believe to be in the long run wholly
beneficial to Christian thought. These are:

The encouragement in theology of that evolutionary method of
observation and study, which has shaped all modern research:

The recoil of Christian apologetics towards the ground of religious
experience, a recoil produced by the pressure of scientific criticism
upon other supports of faith:

The restatement, or the recovery of ancient forms of statement, of the
doctrines of Creation and of divine Design in Nature, consequent upon
the discussion of evolution and of natural selection as its guiding
factor.

(1) The first of these is quite possibly the most important of all. It
was well defined in a notable paper read by Dr. Gore, now Bishop of
Birmingham, to the Church Congress at Shrewsbury in 1896. We have
learnt a new caution both in ascribing and in denying significance to
items of evidence, in utterance or in event. There has been, as in
art, a study of values, which secures perspective and solidity in our
representation of facts. On the one hand, a given utterance or event
cannot be drawn into evidence as if all items we