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not kill us. But may we not rather say that the principle of 

 Evolution discloses one great and vast design — that the best and 

 the noblest are ever surviving and continuing their race only by 

 means of those possessing powers and capacities for that which is 

 yet higher and nobler. 



By some it is further objected that to trace man's pedigree to 

 a common ancestry with that of the lower animals is degrading. 

 But in what does this so called degradation consist ? Is it in the 

 fact that for many past ages man and his more immediate an- 

 cestors have been constantly progressing onward and upward till 

 they have attained their present position ? Do men feel themselves 

 degraded because they are descended from a Saxon freebooter or a 

 Norman plunderer ? Is the body less to be honoured because its 

 bones, its nerves, its muscles are nourished and formed by mineral, 

 vegetable, or animal food, and contain phosphates derived from a 

 fish or fibrine from a pig ? 



Natural science is not directly concerned with theology, but 

 it is not a cause of surprise to any observer of the facts and 

 phenomena which suiTOund us in our present existence to find 

 the same principles and same laws holding good in various 

 departments. Has not Christianity its own story of gradual evolu- 

 tion, of development, or evolution of truth, and of sui'vival of the 

 fittest in doctrine and modes of worship. Every reader of its 

 sacred writings and history will note the one watchword of pro- 

 gress ; old ideas giving place to new, the spiritual attainments of 

 one race or generation being the stepping-stone to still higher 

 advances in the future; though even now and again in the nine- 

 teenth century we have instances of reversion to the older types 

 of superstition and cruelty. 



Acknowledging therefore in the fullest and most unqualified 

 sense that the Doctrine of Evolution, or, as it is popularly called, 

 Darwinism, is derived from carefully observed facts, and that its 

 conclusions, as stated by its illustrious teacher, are based upon 

 scientific truth, I expect to find it harmonize with all other truths 

 by whomsoever taught. If our theological WTiters assert that its 

 conclusions clash with their formulated dogmas or ecclesiastical 

 systems, let them look well to their modes of interpretation; see 

 that they have not misread their books ; and if necessary let them 

 seek to discover some more accurate exegesis or more reliable 

 henneneutics by which their system may be brought into harmony 



