324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



far as his corporeal frame is concerned," * is created, as other spe- 

 cies were, by evolution from lower forms ; if he was not, as we 

 have been accustomed to think, an independent creation, but re- 

 lated through his whole bodily structure with " the beasts that 

 perish " ; if he was not an absolutely new departure, but the last 

 term in a progressive series — how does this new view affect our 

 Christian faith ? 



We might have been ready to answer. It no more touches the 

 Christian view of human nature than a scientific proof, if it had 

 been possible, that our blessed Lord was very man would affect 

 the truth of his divinity. And the analogy is a very close one. 

 It is not heresy to assert that Christ is "Av^powros, but that he is 

 i/'tAos av^pcoTTos, man and nothing more. Similarly, say what we 

 will of the affinities of man's physical nature, it is only when we 

 deny that he is anything more that we really degrade him. As 

 Bacon somewhere puts it — 



They that deny a God destroy man's nobility ; for certainly man is of kin to 

 the beasts by his body ; and if he be not of kia to God by his spirit, he is an igno- 

 ble creature. 



Unfortunately, Christian apologists have missed an important 

 distinction. They have not seen that their controversy with a 

 Darwinian agnostic is a controversy with his agnosticism, not 

 with his Darwinism ; with his limitation of all knowledge to the 

 facts of sense, not with any doctrine he may scientifically prove 

 as to the interrelations of the facts observed. 



We are constantly told that Darwinism is degrading, that it is 

 unworthy of the dignity of man, that it is a " gospel of dirt." If 

 such a charge had come from a representative of those nations 

 which held the descent of man from gods or demigods, it would 

 have been intelligible enough, but it sounds strange in the mouth 

 of those who believe that " the Lord God formed man of the dust 

 of the ground." Indeed, what in Darwinism is called a " gospel 

 of dirt," appears in the Bible as a " gospel of grace." We naturally, 

 as Kingsley says, seek — 



To set up some " dignity of human nature," some innate superiority to the ani- 

 mals, on which we may pride ourselves as our own possession, and not return 

 thanks with fear and trembling for it as the special gift of Almighty God.f 



But the inspired writers " revel in self - depreciation " that 

 they may the more exalt the love and condescension of God. The 

 moral, as distinct from the scientific, teaching of the Bible can 

 not be mistaken in this matter. Man made in the image of God, 

 inbreathed with the breath of life, is formed of the dust of the 

 ground. God's method is always to choose " the base things of 

 the world and things which are despised," and use them for his 



* Dar^vin, ii, p. 140. f " Prose Idylb," p. 22. 



