i 7 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



student turns to experience, lie finds that violations of natural order 

 which were supposed to take place in old times now take place no 

 more ; that no such violations can be found in times and places where 

 they can he verified. Even in the sphere of Christian apologetics this 

 is admitted more and more. The position of miracles has completely 

 changed. They are no longer the basis of the argument, but are 

 themselves the subject of apology. One accepted writer puts them in 

 the fifth rank of evidences. Bishop Temple, in his " Bampton Lect- 

 ures," shows by his treatment of them that they have lost their power. 

 It is only the fact that they are supposed to be bound up with the 

 moral and spiritual forces of Christianity which prevents their being 

 treated as wholly indifferent. 



We notice next the theory of evolution. Let it be granted that it 

 is still a theory, and that the vast gaps in the geological record, and 

 the chasm between man and brute, are not filled up. Yet the existence 

 of evolution, in a constantly increasing circle of observed phenomena, 

 is clear ; and it would be perilous to rest any belief upon a supposition 

 that the theory, even in its full compass, will be disproved. It is said 

 that life must have had a beginning. Is it certain that life itself has not 

 been developed, as some persons believe, or that the potency of life is 

 not inherent in the elements of which the world is formed ? The evi- 

 dence may not at present point toward such a conclusion ; but again 

 it would be perilous to build upon the opposite theory. Indeed, the 

 idea of creation must be admitted to be a negative rather than a posi- 

 tive idea. God made the world ; but how ? As soon as we attempt 

 to put a positive sense into the word creation, it fails us. But what, 

 it is asked, and where, is God, if he be not a creator ? We must con- 

 ceive of him otherwise than as a workman standing outside his work. 



If we turn from the physical sciences to the science of language, 

 which is said by Professor Max Midler to be itself a physical science, 

 we are led up through comparative philology to comparative theology. 

 The knowledge of the religions of the East and West shows us in their 

 development points of the closest analogy with that recorded in the 

 Bible, and the question is forced upon us whether there is any line to 

 be drawn between them. Is not the idea of God in some of them both 

 monotheistic and moral ? If we fix our minds upon ideas once thought 

 to be exclusively Christian, are there not incarnations and miraculous 

 births and resurrections in the Brahmanical religion ? Is there not the 

 idea of self-sacrifice and of the equality of men in Buddhism ? Does 

 not Confucius come very near, to say the least, to the enunciation of 

 the golden rule of the gospel ? And has not this estimate of the 

 Eastern religion so forced itself upon us that, whereas before the knowl- 

 edge of the sacred books of the East missionaries were apt to speak 

 only of the perishing heathen, and of their superstition and immorality, 

 which were sinking them to perdition, now they speak rather of the 

 hopeful side of their life, and apply the gospel as the means of evoking 



