of those who in the idea of an origin of species through descent do not yet see an injury to the theistic and Christian conception of God and creation, still as a rule this concession was made only to the idea of descent, and not to that of selection and to that which is properly called Darwinism. As a rule, in most of the theological works which treat in general of the Darwinian questions, Darwinism and opposition to the Christian conception of God and creation were and are still taken as identical. For instance, Ebrard, in the first part of his "Apologetik" ("Apologetics"), Gütersloh, Bertelsmann, 1874, enumerates among the systems which are opposed to Christianity, in the same line with the doubtless anti-theistic and anti-Christian aposkopiology or negation of the idea of design, also the mechanistic system, or the negation of the organic vital force, and the Darwinian theory of descent. Besides, in reading his "Apologetics," we had earnestly wished, in the interest of science as well as of religion, that a theologian who writes a work which claims to be scientific and to advocate the Christian standpoint, had abstained from that coarse and disgusting contempt and derision of adversaries which we meet so often in his book, and which only causes friend and foe to take a position contrary to that which the author intended. Trümpelmann who, in an essay upon Darwinism, monistic philosophy, and Christianity (Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie, 1876, I) gives a similar conception of the relation between Darwinism and religion, but defends his whole position with much more scientific acuteness and depth, has also not taken the tone which worthily treats an opposite opinion and its advocates.
CHAPTER II.
REFORM OF RELIGION, OR AT LEAST OF THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION, THROUGH DARWINISM.
§ 1. Heinrich Lang, Friedrich Vischer, Gustav Jäger.
In passing on to those who in Darwinism do not see a negation but a reformation of religion, or at least of theology, we first meet Heinrich Lang, the late spiritual leader of the "Reformtheologie" in Switzerland. He treats of "Die Religion im Zeitalter Darwins" ("Religion in the Age of Darwin") in Holtzendorff's and Oncken's "Deutsche Zeit- und Streitfragen," Jahrg. II, Heft 31, Berlin, Lüderitz, 1873.
With a very correct estimate of the lasting value of religion as well as of natural science, and with a warm apology for the religious realm, he regulates the boundaries of each by asking religion not to hinder modern knowledge of the world and nature, and by asking knowledge of nature to leave the realm of religion untouched in its self-certainty.
But when he, evidently still dependent on the old rationalistic supernaturalistic conception of miracle and providence, claims to find that as the result of modern knowledge of the world and nature a special providence is no longer conceivable, and no other hearing of prayer is possible than a subjective psychological one; that the processes in the world, in their entire final causal connection of causes and effects, nowhere leave a place for
the freely acting hand of a divine Lord of the world, and that even a moral order of the world can only prove itself so far as guilt and punishment stand in a natural causal connection with one another: then his religiousness makes concessions to the modern view of the world which it is not at all obliged to make or justified in making, and forces upon religion a reform against the necessity and usefulness of which not only religious feeling and need, but also deeper and more consequent reflection on God and the world, just as strongly strives.