Scientific Evolution. 155 



indirectly bring about results of an opposite character. 

 If when we come to consider philosophic evolution, we 

 find reason to believe that such evolution will not be 

 prejudicial to Christianity, then the number of Christians 

 (and of the adherents of that natural religion of reason 

 which Christianity takes for its basis) must continue 

 to be large. In that case both its teachers and disciples 

 must come to share in, and be more or less thoroughly 

 imbued with, that physical science culture which it has 

 been supposed will hereafter be so generally diffused. 

 They will thus be guarded from simply accepting as 

 so many (through ignorance) now accept the dogmatic 

 assertions of some physical experts that a real incom- 

 patibility exists between science and religion. Also, 

 many adherents of natural theology will as surely be- 

 come convinced that arguments which they have dis- 

 covered to be futile as directed against natural religion 

 have neither more nor less weight as directed against 

 Christianity.* On the other hand, the very arguments 



* The late Mr. John Stuart Mill in his " Autobiography " (p. 70) 

 laments that " those who reject revelation very generally take refuge 

 in an optimistic deism, a worship of the order of nature and the 

 supposed course of providence, at least as full of contradictions 

 and perverting to the moral sentiments as any of the forms of 

 Christianity, if only it is completely realised." At pp. 38, 39, he 

 tells us that his father held Butler's " Analogy " in esteem, and that 

 it " kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, a believer in 

 the divine authority of Christianity, by proving to him that whatever 



