154 Contemporary Evolution. 



But leaving for the present the question of philosophy, 

 let us seek the best answer we can get to our special 

 question here the effect of scientific evolution on the 

 Church and her ministers. 



We have seen that physical science must go on in- 

 creasing and diffusing itself while the disconnection of 

 the clergy from the pursuit and attainment of distinction 

 in the field of such science is likely to widen. At the 

 same time we have seen that the assertions of Christian 

 theology are not of a nature to be capable of disproof 

 by any science of the kind. If physics could demon- 

 strate that there is no knowable or personal First Cause ; 

 that no prototypal design in eternity preceded the orderly 

 evolution of the physical universe in time ; if it could 

 show that death, which necessitates the cessation of 

 intellectual action as we experience it, necessarily or 

 certainly renders all intellectual action impossible ; if 

 it could demonstrate that Christ never lived or never 

 rose, the blessed Virgin was not immaculately conceived, 

 or that there is no Divine presence in the eucharist, 

 then indeed the triumph of such science would but be 

 another phrase to denote the annihilation of Christianity ; 

 but to all such questions physical science can have 

 necessarily nothing to say. But it is here contended, 

 not only that the growth of physical science cannot in 

 itself have an ultimately detrimental effect on the Church, 

 but that its very growth is accidentally calculated to 



