XII.] THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, 301) 



presents to us a perfectly different aspect of the uuiverse 

 from that presented by the sciences. Tlie two informations 

 are like the distinct subjects represented by the lines of 

 the same drawing, which, accordingly as they are read on 

 their concave or convex side, exhibit to us now a group of 

 trees with branches and leaves, and now human faces." . . . 

 " While then reason and revelation are consistent in fact, 

 they often are inconsistent in appearance ; and this seeming 

 discordance acts most keenly on the imagination, and may 

 suddenly expose a man to the temptation, and even hurry 

 him on to the commission of definite acts of unbelief, in which 

 reason itself really does not come into exercise at all." ^ 



Thus we find just that distinctness between the ideas 

 derived from physical science on the one hand and from 

 religion on the other, which we might a priori expect if 

 there exists that distinctness between the natural and tlie 

 miraculous which theological authorities lay down. 



Assuming, for argument's sake, the truth of Christianity, 

 evidently the intention of its Author has not been to make 

 the evidence for it so plain that its rejection w^ould be 

 the mark of intellectual incapacity. Conviction is not 

 forced upon men as the knowledge that the govern- 

 ment of England is constitutional, or that Paris is the 

 capital of France, is forced upon all who choose to inquire 

 into those subjects. The Christian system is one which 

 puts on the strain, as it were, every faculty of man's higher 

 nature, and the intellect is not (any more than we should 

 a priori expect it to be) exempted from taking part in the 



' Thus Professor Tyndall, in the Pall Mall Gazette of June lo, 1868, 

 speaking of physical science, somewhat naively observes, "The logical 

 feebleness of science is not sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps down the 

 weed of superstition, not by logic, but by slowly rendering the mental soil 

 unlit for its cultivation," — i.e. by an illogical prejudice. ^ 



