EVOLUTION BOUNDED BY THEOLOGY. 151 



phy, or he does not. If be does, then there will be trouble ; for the 

 evolutionist will ask for evidence that will scarcely be forthcoming. 

 If he does not, but merely asks the evolutionist to allow in his system 

 a place for the sense of sin, the reply of the latter will undoubtedly 

 be : My dear sir, you are going to unnecessary trouble in this matter ; 

 for the school to which I belong not only recognizes the fact to which 

 you refer, but may even claim to have scientifically explained it years 

 ago. 



The third test-doctrine is that of redemption. Evolution must 

 bow to this also, or else go on its way to destruction. At first sight 

 the condition may seem hard, but Dr. Abbott has a rare faculty for 

 minimizing difficulties. Just as he illustrated the Fall for us by refer- 

 ring to the decadence of Greece, Italy, and the Southern States of the 

 Union the points of comparison in the latter case being " the moral 

 utterances of Jefferson and Madison," on the one hand, and those of 

 the pro-slavery leaders of the period just prior to secession on the 

 other so, when it comes to expounding redemption, he exhibits it to 

 us in the action of a higher personality upon a lower : that, for exam- 

 ple, of father, mother, or teacher upon the wayward character of a 

 child. It is true that he adds : " No soul, and so no aggregation of 

 souls, can climb up to God ; he stoops down and lifts us up to him- 

 self." But this, again, is manifestly the language of devotion. How 

 can science take any cognizance of such terms? Professor Huxley 

 spoke not irreverently, but simply as a man of common sense, when, 

 in his recent controversy with Mr. Gladstone, he observed that he 

 could not match any detail of the nebular hypothesis with the script- 

 ural statement that " the spirit of God moved on the face of the 

 waters." To throw such declarations at the man of science, and ask 

 him what he makes of them, is eminently unreasonable. They may 

 and do find an echo in the religious nature ; but they do not lend 

 themselves to any kind of scientific appraisement. The business of 

 science, it can not be too often repeated, is not to force its way into 

 men's hearts, and lay a ruthless hand upon the altar of the religious 

 life. It is none of its business to apply rule or plummet, or any other 

 instruments of exact determination, to the religious aspirations, or to 

 the forms or formulas in which these express themselves. Its business 

 is with definite, determinate facts or statements ; it builds alone upon 

 these, it concerns itself alone with these. It respects the religious life, 

 and would willingly draw a wide precinct around it to preserve it 

 from all undue intrusion. But, on the other hand, it claims complete 

 independence within its own region, and will not surrender one atom 

 of determinate fact, or forego a single one of its conclusions, because, 

 forsooth, some one asserts that the interests of religion are involved 

 in having the fact or the conclusion so, rather than so ! Religion has 

 to learn that it can neither make nor mold facts, nor arbitrarily con- 

 trol logical processes. It must learn to be self-sufficing in its own 



