DARWINISM AND DIVINITY 



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could prove the contrary, men must be supposed to have developed 

 out of monkeys by the forces now at work, the imagination would 

 outrun the reason. It would be assumed that a religion was the 

 growth of that stage of development at which the human intellect had 

 arrived, and not the work of a series of sudden interferences. Chris- 

 tianity would be a phenomenon to be studied like others by the inves- 

 tigation of the conditions under which it arose, and the advocates of a 

 theory of supernatural intervention would have to encounter a set of 

 established beliefs instead of finding them in their favor. This is the 

 imperceptible intellectual influence which gradually permeates and 

 transforms the prevalent conceptions by a process which is as irresist- 

 ible as it is difficult to define by accurate formula?. Religious instincts, 

 we rightly say, are indestructible ; but the forms in which they may 

 be embodied are indefinitely variable, and no one can say how fast and 

 how far the influence of a change worked in one department of thought 

 may gradually spread by a silent contagion to others apparently re- 

 moved from it. 



Thus, admitting to the fullest extent that Darwinism not only does 

 not threaten, but does not even tend to threaten, the really valuable 

 elements of our religious opinions, it is quite consistent to maintain that 

 it may change the conceptions in which they are at present embodied to 

 an extent to which it is impossible to assign any limits. Darwinism, 

 for example, does not make it more difficult to believe in a God. On 

 the contrary, it may be fairly urged that any theory which tends to 

 bring any sort of order out of the confused chaos of facts which we 

 have before us, makes it so far more easy to maintain a rational theism 

 such as is now possible. It helps lis to form some dim guess of whence 

 we are coming and of whither we are going to see, as it were, an arc of 

 the vast orbit in which the world is revolving, instead of behm- limited 

 to an infinitesimal element, lost at each extremity in hopeless darkness. 

 But it is true that it weakens that conception of the Creator which sup- 

 poses him to intervene at stated periods, in order to give an impulse to the 

 machinery. How deeply that change may affect all manner of theological 

 conceptions it is unnecessary to consider. There is another doctrine 

 which seems to be more nearly affected ; and probably, though we seldom 

 give open expression to our fears, it is this tendency which is really the 

 animating cause of the alarm which is obviously felt. Does not the 

 new theory make it difficult to believe in immortal souls ? If we 

 admit that the difference between men and monkeys is merely a differ- 

 ence of degree, can we continue to hold that monkeys will disappear 

 at their death like a bubble, and that men will rise from their ashes ? 

 So vast a difference in the ultimate fate and the intrinsic nature of the 

 two links should surely correspond to a wide gap in the chain. We 

 are too proud to admit a gorilla or a chimpanzee to a future world, and 

 yet, if they are only lower forms of humanity, we do not quite see our 

 way to exclude them. The difficulty in one shape or another has long 



