It is very interesting now to look back upon the history and career of the Darwinian theory in the last thirty years; to recall, first the fierce outcry and denunciation it elicited, then the gradual accumulation of corroboratory evidence from all quarters in its favor; the accession of one scientific authority after another to the new views; the softening, little by little, of ecclesiastical opposition; its gradual acceptance by the broad-minded alike in theological and scientific circles; then, in these recent years, the exaltation of the new theory into a scientific and philosophic creed, wherein matter, force, and evolution constitute the new trinity, which, unless the modern man piously believes, he becomes anathematized and excommunicated by all the priests of the new dogmatism.
In the field of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has recently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, for the publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution are frankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself a Christian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority) a contradiction in terms.
I think it is safe to say to-day that Evolution has come to stay. It is too late to turn it out of the mansions of modern thought. And it is, therefore, a vital question, “Can belief in God, and the soul, and divine revelation abide under the same roof with evolution in peace? Or must Christianity vacate the realm of modern thought and leave it to the chilling frosts of materialism and scepticism?”
Now, if I have been able to understand the issue and its grounds, there is no such alternative, no such incompatibility between Evolution and Christianity.
There is, I know, a form of Evolution and a form of Christianity, which are mutually contradictory.
There is a form of Evolution which is narrowly materialistic. It dogmatically asserts that there is nothing in existence but matter and physical forces, and the iron laws according to which they develop. Life, according to this school, is only a product of the happy combination of the atoms; feeling and thought are but the iridescence of the brain tissues; conscience but a transmuted form of ancestral fears and expediences. Soul, revelation, providence, nothing but illusions of the childish fancy of humanity’s infancy. Opposed to it, fighting with all the intensity of those who fight for their very life, stands a school of Christians who maintain that unless the special creation of species by divine fiat and the frequent intervention of God and His angels in the world be admitted, religion has received its death wound. According to this school, unless the world was created in six days, and Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, and Hezekiah turned the solar shadow back on the dial, and Jesus was born without human father, and unless some new miracle will interfere with the regular course of law, of rain and dew, of sickness and health, of cause and effect, whenever a believer lifts up his voice in prayer, why then, the very foundations of religion are destroyed.
Now, of course, between a Christianity and an Evolutionism of this sort, there is an irreconcilable conflict. But it is because neither of them is a fair, rational, or true form of thought.
When the principle of Evolution is properly comprehended and expounded; when Christianity is interpreted in the light that history and philosophy require,—the two will be found to have no difficulty in joining hands.
Though a purely naturalistic Evolutionism may ignore God; and a purely supernatural religion may leave no room for Evolution, a natural religion and a rational Evolutionism may yet harmoniously unite in a higher and more fruitful marriage.
Let us only recognize Evolution by the divine spirit, as the process of God’s working in the world, and we have then a theory which has a place and a function, at once for all that the newest science has to teach and the most venerable faith needs to retain.