382 RELIGIOUS WORK 



of the God even of Edwards' famous' sermon entitled, Sinners in 

 the Hands of an Angry God, I would infinitely prefer the latter." 

 So pessimistic a view of human life as that represented by Darwin's 

 law of the survival of the fittest, thank God, is not the view of 

 Christianity; for Christianity regards humanity as not merely ani- 

 mal, but made in the image of God also, belonging to a common- 

 wealth of moral worth, with the possibilities of redeemed spiritual 

 being. Hence, all the unfit may pass into the fit stage of existence 

 and so, as precious to God, survive. 



It will be recalled that George J. Romanes, when he returned to 

 Christian faith after a long period of agnostic doubt, acknowledged 

 that at the earlier period of his scientific studies he " did not 

 sufficiently appreciate the immense importance of human nature, 

 as distinguished from physical nature, in any inquiry touching 

 theism." He, himself, says, " But since that early time I have 

 seriously studied anthropology, including the science of compara- 

 tive religions, psychology, and metaphysics, with the result of 

 clearly seeing that human nature is the most important part of 

 nature as a whole, whereby to investigate the theory of theism." 

 " This," Romanes says, " I ought to have anticipated on merely 

 a priori grounds, and no doubt should have perceived had I not 

 been too much immersed in merely physical research." 



It may be added that this eminent man, for so many years a 

 close follower of Darwin, was led to this new appreciation of 

 human nature as the chief part of nature as a whole through cor- 

 respondence with a Christian missionary, who has also attained 

 distinction in the realm of natural science, Dr. John T. Gulick, of 

 Japan, and now laboring in the Hawaiian Islands. On far deeper 

 principles than physical science even at its best has ever con- 

 templated, cannibals of interior Africa, the South Seas, and the 

 pariahs of India, counted by their tyrannical superiors as the 

 offscouring of the earth, have survived by tens of thousands and 

 are the glorious trophies of Christian missions, and so of Christ 

 himself, who is the Saviour of the lost, the Redeemer of all types 

 of human failure. 



A religion which can produce such a saving reversal in human 

 hopes and conditions is adapted to find welcome and prevalence on 

 a universal scale. 



Ill 



But a third ground of confidence for believing that Chris- 

 tianity is adapted to become the universal and absolute religion 

 is in the valuation it places upon the principle of loyalty to light, 

 and the divine authentication in experience assured to it. This it 



