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Contemporary Evolution. 



of physically scientific teaching, a strongly anti-Christian 

 philosophic school, of which Strauss may be taken as a 

 type, having eagerly caught at such physical teaching as 

 a most convenient auxiliary. 



The English of the eighteenth century were the leaders 

 in speculative thought, and for all the great praise often 

 bestowed upon German culture, the same may be said 

 of those of our metaphysical writers of to-day who also 

 deal with physical science. Darwin has nowhere so 

 great a following as in Germany, while Mill has no slight 

 influence in the land where his ashes repose. It will, it 

 is believed, then, be amply sufficient for our purpose if 

 we mainly direct our attention to the English sensational 

 school which is ousting Hegel in Germany, and Cousin 

 in France, and which claims to have done justice to Kant 

 and Reid by harmonising the truths they held with the 

 apparently contradictory, but really complementary, veri- 

 ties put forward by those they refuted. The teaching of 

 the English school, as represented, amongst others, by 

 Mill, Bain, Spencer, and Lewes, logically culminates in 

 three negations ; namely, of God, the soul, and virtue. 

 Yet this is the school still honoured by the University of 

 London with its exclusive patronage, thus imbuing with 

 its doctrines the minds of all our most cultured youth. 

 If such a system can sustain itself, and, still more, if it 

 can propagate itself, its effect on Christianity need not 

 be stated. These terms, which some may be disposed to 



