RELIGION AND TEE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 239 



die out. Tecumseli struggled in vain against this impelling force, and 

 pleaded that his people might be suffered to be as they were, but in vain. 



The new leaven has been deposited, and its working is inevitable. 

 Men say : " Let the savage alone ; do not try to teach him civilization ; 

 he is happier in the state of nature than he can be in any that is more 

 artificial " — and perhaps they tell the truth. It is a thorny path — 

 this of progress — and the first step costs the most. We may even ad- 

 mit, with a recent distinguished sympathizer in the retrogressive lean- 

 ings toward the simplicity of savagedom : " It is the direct tendency 

 of our civilization to carry human beings toward an extreme as far be- 

 yond the simple elements of happiness and every form of good as 

 savage life falls short of them." * 



Doubtless, development increases the capacity both for enjoyment 

 and for suffering. And if it be questioned whether joy or sorrow pre- 

 dominates in the experiences of our highest civilization, it may well 

 be doubted whether, in the first awakenings of a people, when the 

 power of judging between good and evil has not yet been formed, and 

 when self-control is as yet imknown, the evil influences do not out- 

 weigh the good. Left to himself, the child in his early gropings gets 

 many a bruise, many a tumble ; yet, once having breathed the breath 

 of life, the infant race is thenceforward impelled by a law inexorable 

 as human destiny. If, as some advise, we abandon these people, and 

 say : " We will not help you along a path which is one of toil and un- 

 rest ; be as you were," they will not, it is true, progress in any orderly 

 or efficient manner, but they icill not he as they once were. We can 

 guide them, or we can leave them to the painful and disordered action 

 of their own struggling spirits. They can not return to their former 

 quiet and contented sphere. Restlessness is an essential antecedent to 

 progress ; but restlessness implies conflict and labor. It is something 

 higher than purposeless repose ; but it is something harder. Of old it 

 was said to the woman, " In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children " ; 

 and, by a law as universal, the birth of mind, in nations as well as in 

 individuals, is not without a pang. 



4 « » 



RELIGION AND THE DOCTRmE OF EYOLUTION.f 



Br FEEDEEICK TEMPLE, D. D,, 



BISHOP OF EXETER. 



THE regularity of nature is the first postulate of Science ; but it 

 requires the very slightest observation to show us that, along 

 with this regularity, there exists a vast irregularity, which Science can 

 only deal with by exclusion from its province. The world as we see 



* Dr. George E. Ellis, loc. cit, p. 597. 



f Abstracted from " The Relations between Religion and Science," by the Lord 

 Bishop of Exeter. 



