90 Evolution and its Consequences 



which she reposes, and no acceptance of authority can be 

 called ' blind ' which results from a clear perception both of 

 its rational foundation and of the harmony of its dogmas and 

 precepts with those highest faculties of our nature, reason 

 and conscience. 



I confess myself weary of these tedious declamations as to 

 the incompatability of science with Christianity on the one 

 side, as also of timid deprecations on the other. The true 

 position of these two powers justifies neither such hopes nor 

 such fears ; for, in truth, no possible development of physical 

 science (and as to Biology I claim to speak with some slight 

 knowledge) can conflict with Christian dogma, and therefore 

 every attempt to attack it from that basis is necessarily 

 futile. 



On the other hand, so far from the Christian rehgion 

 tending to cramp or fetter intellectual development, it is 

 notorious that some of the profoundest thinkers of recent, as 

 of more ancient times, have been believers in Christianity, 

 and I am convinced that every man who rejects that belief is 

 i'pso facto necessarily condemned not only to a moral but also, 

 and as inevitably, to an intellectual inferiority as compared 

 with what he might attain did he accept that system in its 

 fulness. The Christian creed has long been before the world. 

 I would invite Professor Huxley to formulate his system in 

 distinct propositions, that it also may be tested by our 

 supreme and ultimate standards — ' reason ' and ' conscience.' 



With the extreme hatred of Catholicity which animates 

 my critic, it is easy to understand the irritation which my 

 demonstration of the harmony which exists between the 

 Church and modern science has caused him. He lets it be 

 seen that he had supposed science to have thoroughly refuted 

 some of the Church's fundamental dogmas, hence the 

 vehement reproaches I have unwittingly drawn down upon 

 my head by my endeavour to promote concord. I feel 



