EX-PRESIDENT PORTER ON EVOLUTION. 593 



done, or all the world will go after the new lights. Well, we too are 

 profoundly convinced that something must be done. We have, on the 

 one hand, ministers of religion and doctors of divinity denouncing mod- 

 ern science as godless ; we have, on the other hand, men of science 

 showing by their practice, if not by words, how little weight they at- 

 tach to clerical objurgations. The priests proclaim that the dominant 

 scientific philosophy destroys the sense of moral obligation ; nay, 

 more, destroys the ground of moral obligation. The scientists reply, 

 in effect, that their philosophy is true, and that moral obligation must 

 take care of itself. The situation is dangerous. It is a dangerous 

 thing to tether moral obligation to outworn creeds ; and it is an al- 

 most equally dangerous thing to formulate new principles of scientific 

 inquiry, without clearly and frequently exhibiting the provision they 

 make for the regulation of conduct. On the part of the theological 

 world, there has been too much of frowning opposition to inevitable 

 change ; on the part of the scientific world too much gayety of heart in 

 setting out for new destinations. The theologians have, for the most 

 part, repulsed as a foe what they should have hailed as a friend ; and 

 the scientists have not shown quite enough consideration for the weaker 

 brethren to whose convictions their new speculations were giving a 

 shock. 



We think, therefore, that there has been error on both sides, and 

 that it is now high time the whole matter should be considered, as it 

 were, in joint committee. The word has gone forth : morality must stand 

 on a basis of natural law, or it can not stand at all. God can not make 

 morality. He has to be moral Himself first before He can even sanction 

 it ; and, if we know God as moral, we know morality apart from the 

 idea of God. The problem of the day, therefore, is the formulation 

 and enforcement of a natural morality a morality resulting from the 

 nature of man and the conditions of his existence. We have to look 

 the Universe in the face and question of it what it would have us do ; 

 that is to say, on what term3 the harmony and happiness of human life 

 are to be won. Heretofore men have trusted to names to Moses and 

 Manu, to Jesus and Buddha, and have received, at the hands of these, 

 laws that were in reality the embodiment of human experience ; but 

 the time is coming, yea, now is, when law must take on an impersonal 

 character and be obeyed as law. There is no uncertainty as to the 

 fundamental principles of morals ; but we have weakly allowed our- 

 selves to think that the authority of all moral teaching is bound up 

 with certain traditional doctrines. That is the cardinal error which 

 earnest men should strive with all their power to banish. If there are 

 signs among us of a relaxation of moral discipline, they can be ac- 

 counted for, we think, by the fact that moral instruction has been be- 

 coming, for some time past, less and less a domestic matter, and more 

 and more the function of a professional class. It was not through any 

 professional class that Moses proposed to provide for the moral educa- 

 vol. xxix. 38 



