332 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



law, we come into relation with the sovereign 

 authority, or command of the Ruler over all. 

 Strange also, as we read out the writing telling of 

 the government of Nature, appears the double relation 

 of the rational life to law physical and law ethical. 

 This bodily life of man is, in its relation to the forces 

 of Nature, exposed to all the risks which assail the 

 lowest organism, yet has the Ruler of all Himself 

 interposed to provide for it a special defence. This 

 witness for moral law we have in man s sense of 

 solemn obligation. Everywhere on earth some ac 

 knowledgment of this appears. Violations of this 

 moral law, as of all other law, there have been, and 

 there continue to be, else how should we have had 

 these names murder and criminal/ bearing witness 

 against iniquity, as they testify to the common 

 convictions and sentiments of men ? We cannot think 

 lightly of the extent of murderous violence, nor 

 underestimate the horror it awakens in those who have 

 heard details of the cruelty involved. We cannot 

 overlook in the world s history, the cannibalism which 

 has existed among barbarians; the horrors of war, 

 when wholesale destruction of human life has followed 

 on clash of arms ; the evil aspects of religious fana 

 ticism, when a fatalistic belief has grasped the sword as 

 the appointed instrument of destruction for the infidel ; 

 and, most hideous of all, the cases in which servants 

 of Christ, himself the gentlest of men, most patient 

 in judging, have resorted to the most horrible tortures 

 as a means of bringing back to the faith those charged 

 with heresy. All these things we read in history, not 

 withstanding the law which makes human life sacred. 

 But all through these blackened, dreary records, 



