GROUNDS AND CONSEQUENCES OF EVOLUTION. 333 



We now think it far safer to accept the hypothesis than 

 to reject it. If it is safer for the scientist it is safer for 

 religion. It is therefore time for the theologian to seek 

 how to coordinate his essential faith with the impending 

 finality of science. 



It is not our purpose in this place to attempt any 

 presentation of the facts which, in our judgment, as in 

 that of the majority of scientific men, afford a strong 

 balance of evidence in support of the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion through a material continuity. We may, however, 

 indicate, in a synoptical way, the nature of the argument. 



There is first, what may be called the morphological 

 evidence, or evidence furnished by structural relationships 

 and family resemblances among living animals and plants. 

 Everyone understands what is meant by saying one per- 

 son bears a family resemblance to another. It implies 

 that there is a blood-connection between them. In some 

 generation more or less remote their lineage converges, 

 and the same parents stand as common ancestors to both 

 persons. Precisely the same thing is involved in the state- 

 ment that the dog, the wolf and the jackal have a family 

 resemblance, or the cat, the lynx, the ounce and the 

 panther. The resemblances in these families are not so 



than the later ones." Lay Sermons and Addresses, pp. 225, 226. In his address 

 before the same society in 1870 he says: "When I come to the propositions 

 touching progressive modification, it appears to me. with the help of the new light 

 which has broken from various quarters, that there is much ground for softening 

 the somewhat Brutus-like severity with which, in 1862, I dealt with a doctrine 

 for the truth of which I should have been glad enough to find a good foundation. 

 * * * When we turn to the higher vertebrata, the results of recent investiga- 

 tions, however we may sift and criticise them, seem to me to leave a clear bal- 

 ance in favor of the doctrine of the evolution of living forms, one from another." 

 Critiques and Addresse*, pp. 186, 187. In 1876, after the presentation of the 

 geological history of the hors^-type to a New York audience, he concluded by 

 paying: " That is what 1 mean, ladies and gentlemen, by demonstrative evidence 

 of evolution." Popular Science Monthly, Ivii, 296. 



