But these years were, to him and to many, years of peculiar and of extraordinary difficulty. Roughly speaking, the time between 1860 and 1880 was a time of great perplexity to those who wished to adhere to the faith of Christendom.
It is impossible to exaggerate the influence which Mr. Darwin's great work has had on every department of science, of literature, and also of art. Thirty-six years have passed away since the publication of the 'Origin of Species,' and we have lived to see that again tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Now we see that a man can fully accept the doctrine of evolution, and yet can also believe in a personal God and in the doctrines which logically follow on such a belief. But it was not so at first. To many on both sides the new teaching seemed to threaten destruction to Theism, at least to Theism as understood either by Newman or by Martineau.
Again, in philosophy Herbert Spencer seemed to many to have constructed a lasting system of philosophy, a system sufficient to account for all things in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. And German criticism seemed to many to be rapidly destroying the credibility of the early documents of Christianity.
Many a noble soul made shipwreck of its faith, nor is this disaster wonderful. For popular theology had made many unwise, many untenable claims, and the ground had to be cleared before the battle could be fought out on its real issues. There were some who, amidst all the strife of tongues, kept their heads, remembered bygone storms, and did not lose their courage, their whole-heartedness, but they were few, and were not over much heard or heeded.[18] For the most part, those on the Christian side adopted the line taken by the Bishop of Oxford in his review of Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species' in the 'Quarterly Review,' and in his famous speech at Oxford during the British Association of 1860.
Certainly the outlook now is more encouraging than it was twenty years ago.
It has been well and eloquently said by one than whom none is more qualified to speak on this subject:[19] 'It is quite certain that this scientific obstacle has been, in the main, removed. In part, it has been through the theologians abandoning false claims, and learning, if somewhat unwillingly, that they have no "Bible revelation" in matters of science; in part, it has been through its becoming continually more apparent, that the limits of scientific "explanation" of nature are soon reached; that the ultimate causes, forces, conditions of nature are as unexplained as ever, or rather postulate as ever for their explanation a Divine mind. Thus, if one "argument from design" was destroyed, another was only brought into prominence. No account which science can give, by discovery or conjecture, of the method of creation, can ever weaken the argument which lies from the universality of law, order, and beauty in the universe to the universality of mind. The mind of man looks forth into nature, and finds nowhere unintelligible chance, but everywhere an order, a system, a law, a beauty, which corresponds, as greater to less, to his own rational and spiritual intuitions, methods, and expectations. Universal order, intelligibility, beauty, mean that something akin to the human spirit, something of which the human spirit is an offshoot and a reflection, is in the universe before it is in man.
'Or, again, a prolonged period of controversy and reflection has resulted in making it fairly apparent that no scientific doctrine or conjecture about the dim origins of the spiritual life of man can affect the argument from its development and persistence. It has developed and persisted, as one of the most prominent features of human life, solely on the postulate of God. And is it not out of analogy with all that science teaches us to imagine that so important, continuous, and universal a development of human faculty could have arisen and persisted unless it were in correspondence with reality?
'In fact we may almost say that the obstacles to belief on the side of science were gone when once it was admitted that God Who has revealed to us His nature and ours, and made this revelation in part through an historical process and in the literature of a nation, has yet, and for obvious reasons, given us no revelation at all on matters which fall within the domain of scientific research.
'A similar removal of obstacles must be claimed in the region of historical criticism. There, again, it has become apparent that, whatever turns out true about this or that Old Testament narrative, no question really vital to the Christian religion can be said to be at stake in this field; while in the region of the New Testament the most sifting criticism has had a result emphatically reassuring. The critical evidence justifies, or more than justifies, the belief of the Church which is expressed in her Creeds.'
But this has been a hard-won fight for most—