468 EVOLUTION AND ANIMAL LIFE 



gians," Huxley tells us, "lie about the cradle of every science 

 as the strangled snakes beside that of the infant Hercules.'' 

 Looking along the history of human thought, we see the attempt 

 to fasten to Christianity each decaying belief in science. Every 

 failing scientific notion has claimed orthodoxy for itself. That 

 the earth is round, that it moves about the sun, that it is old, 

 that granite ever was melted — all these beliefs, now part of our 

 common knowledge, have been declared contrary to religion, 

 and Christian men who knew these things to be true have suf- 

 fered all manner of evil for their sake. We see the hand of the 

 Almighty in nature everywhere ; but everywhere he works with 

 law and order. We have found that even comets have orbits; 

 that valleys were dug out by water, and hills worn down by 

 ice; and all that we have ever known to be done on earth has 

 been done in accordance* with law. 



Darwin says: "To my mind it accords better with what we 

 know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the 

 production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants 

 of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like 

 those determining the birth and death of an individual. When 

 I view all beings, not as special creations, but as lineal descend- 

 ants of some few beings who lived before the first bed of Silurian 

 was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. There 

 is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having 

 been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or 

 into one, and that while this planet has gone cycling on accord- 

 ing to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, 

 endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been 

 and are being evolved." 



With the growth of the race has steadily grown a concep- 

 tion of the omnipotence of God. Our ancestors felt, as many 

 races of men still feel, that each household must have a god of 

 its own, for, numerous as the greater gods were, they were 

 busy with priests and kings. Men could hardly believe that the 

 God of their tribe could be the God of the Gentiles also. That 

 He could dwell in the temples not made with hands removed 

 Him from human sight. That there could be two continents 

 was deemed impossible, for one God could not watch them both. 

 That the earth was the central and sole inhabited planet rested 

 on the same Hmited conception of God. That the beginning 

 of all things was a few thousand years ago is another phase of 



