EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



Jew, carries with it the conviction of a power which 

 instituted natural law and the self-consciousness of 

 the human spirit. To admit the existence of God in 

 any sense of the word is to admit the possibility of 

 the miraculous. 



To say that natural law was instituted by a Power 

 and to deny that natural law may be suspended or 

 changed is to accept the greater mystery and to deny 

 a less. If God instituted the laws by which the solar 

 system moves then I see no reason, so far as physics 

 is concerned, why the sun may not have stood still at 

 the command of God through Joshua. To say that it 

 would have deranged the solar system is an argu- 

 ment which should have no more weight than to say 

 that a man who had made a machine could not stop 

 it and start it again without deranging its mechan- 

 ism. The disbelief in such miracles comes from the 

 conviction of so steadfast a reign of law that the pur- 

 pose ascribed to the miracles is not comm.ensurate 

 with the infraction of the law. But believing, as I 

 do, in free-will, which is contrary to scientific law, 

 and that man can comprehend imperfectly the laws 

 of the universe, it seems reasonable to assume that 

 he also to the same extent comprehends the creator of 

 the laws. The service which science has rendered to 

 religion is to show that the less religion depends on 

 material phenomena and on material laws for its sup- 

 port the purer and nobler it becomes, and less sub- 

 ject to an idolatry of the miraculous. 



C 357 3 



