Three Gains: I. A Jiister Method 479 



is only valid in the region of abstract science. For every science 

 depends for its advance upon limitation of attention, upon the 

 selection out of the whole content of consciousness of that part or 

 aspect which is measurable by the method of the science. Accord- 

 ingly there is a science of life which rightly displays the unity 

 underlying all its manifestations. But there is another view of life, 

 equally valid, and practically sometimes more important, which 

 recognises the immediate and lasting effect of crisis, diflference, and 

 revolution. Our ardour for the demonstration of uniformity of process 

 and of minute continuous change needs to be balanced by a recogni- 

 tion of the catastrophic element in experience, and also by a 

 recognition of the exceptional significance for us of events which 

 may be perfectly regular from an impersonal point of view. 



An exorbitant jealousy of miracle, revelation, and ultimate moral 

 distinctions has been imported from evolutionary science into 

 religious thought. And it has been a damaging influence, because 

 it has taken men's attention from facts, and fixed them upon 

 theories. 



II. 



With this acknowledgment of important drawbacks, requiring 

 many words for their proper description, I proceed to indicate certain 

 results of Darwins doctrine which I believe to be in the long run 

 wholly beneficial to Christian thought. These are: 



The encouragement in theology of that evolutionary method of 

 observation and study, which has shaped all modern research : 



The recoil of Christian apologetics towards tiie ground of religious 

 experience, a recoil produced by the pressure of scientific criticism 

 upon other supports of faith : 



Tlie restatement, or the recovery of ancient forms of statement, of 

 the doctrines of Creation and of divine Design in Nature, consequent 

 upon the discussion of evolution and of natural selection as its 

 guiding factor. 



(1) The first of these is quite possibly the most important of all. 

 It was well defined in a notable paper read by Dr Gore, now Bishop 

 of Birmingham, to the Church Congress at Shrewsbury in 1896. We 

 have learnt a new caution both in ascribing and in denying signifi- 

 cance to items of evidence, in utterance or in event. There has been, 

 as in art, a study of values, which secures perspective and solidity in 

 our representation of facts. On the one hand, a given utterance or 

 event cannot be drawn into evidence as if all items were of equal 

 consequence, like sovereigns in a bag. Tlie question whence and 



