September 2, 1920] 



NATURE 



II 



to hold. Allegory has its value, but it is misused 

 when we employ it to obscure the revolutionary 

 consequences of new knowledge. Religion is too 

 important for us to base it upon, or to join it to, 

 any theories of the nature of the universe that 

 are doubtful or untrue. If Christ is the Light of 

 the world, ail intellectual discovery must be a part 

 of His revelation. If He rightly explained the 

 nature and purpose of God, then the more 

 accurately we discover how God planned and 

 guided the universe so that men have come to 

 exist upon earth, the more natural will it be to 

 accept Christ's teaching. If, on the contrary, the 

 progress of knowledge really discredits the 

 Christian faith, in so far as that faith comes from 

 Jesus Christ, we must sadly admit that Christ 

 cannot have been the Light of mankind. What- 

 ever the consequences, we must accept truth by 

 whomsoever it may have been discovered. A 

 religion not based on truth is vain. A faith that 

 fears the progress of knowledge anticipates its 

 own dissolution. 



Now, the Christian faith is belief in Christ, in 

 His Person, and in His teaching. If Jesus was 

 Divine, His spiritual revelation was without error. 

 His example perfect. In so far as He was man 

 we expect His secular knowledge to have been that 

 of the Galilean carpenter's son. But we can no 

 longer call ourselves Christians if we find that we 

 are forced to admit that He was morally imperfect 

 or mistaken in His view of God or of man's rela- 

 tion to God. I contend that the progress of 

 science has not forced us to make any such admis- 

 sion. It has not destroyed the spiritual infallibility 

 of our Lord, or done anything to upset His 

 teaching as to the nature of God, or as to man's 

 nature and destiny. It has rather, as I hold, con- 

 firmed His insight and made His spiritual wisdom 

 more profoundly impressive. 



Traditional Christian belief was built up of other 

 things besides Christ's teaching. The early 

 Christian Church took over the old Jewish Scrip- 

 tures because it deemed them inspired by God. 

 It placed among its sacred books writings of 

 St. Paul and other earlier followers of the Lord 

 txrause it found that they reflected the Mind of 

 the Master. But there never was a time when 

 thoughtful Christians could thoughtfully have 

 maintained that the Jewish Scriptures were free 

 from moral and historical error. The cursing 

 Psalms arc obviously un-Christian. Books like 

 Kings and Chronicles are rival histories which 

 disagree in spirit and in detail. As a matter of 

 f;ict, the Church has never formally defined in- 

 spiration. We may say truly that inspired books 

 are of peculiar spiritual value; but we may find 

 siich value in .St. Paul's teaching, though we 

 freely admit that his arguments were sometimes 

 unsound. If we discover that old Christian beliefs 

 which did not come from Christ arc erroneous let 

 us not be troubled. P'or Christianity the perfec- 

 tion of Christ's religious teaching and His revela- 

 tion of His own supreme excellence are alone of 

 decisive importance. Views of ancient Jews or 

 of early .Apostles we can abandon when we dis- 

 NO. 2653, VOL. 106] 



cover that they were wrong. Christianity is belief 

 in Christ as ^Vay, Truth, and Life ; belief that He 

 was the Light of the world, the Guide of the 

 spiritual evolution of humanity. It is not belief 

 in the scientific value of Genesis or even in the 

 infallibility of St. Paul. Grasp this fact firmly 

 and you will understand that last century's tragic 

 quarrel between religion and science had its origin 

 in a natural, but none the less deplorable, mistake. 

 The mistake was natural, for there is so much of 

 supreme value in the books of the Bible that men 

 will always venerate them profoundly. In the 

 recent past veneration led to exaggeration, to the 

 claim of infallibility. Let us thank God that men 

 of science have forced us to get a fuller, if rrtore 

 difficult, tvpe of understanding of the value of the 

 Bible. 



But some of you may say, Has not the new 

 knowledge made it impossible to accept the teach- 

 ing of Jesus with regard to God and human im- 

 mortality? Can we accept evolution and yet 

 believe that God, a loving Father, made the world? 

 Can we accept the idea that man and the gorilla 

 have sprung from a common stock and yet hold 

 that man has an immortal soul? I answer em- 

 phatically that we can. I remain sure that God, 

 Who is Love, made and rules the world, certain 

 that man was created that he might enjoy eternal 

 life in communion with God in the world to come. 

 Do you doubt? Reflect for a few moments. 

 Surely the universe had a beginning, and therefore 

 a Creator. It cannot be a meaningless dance of 

 atoms or a whirl of electrons that has gone on for 

 an infinite time. Surely, too, evolution describes a 

 wonderful development, an upward progress, 

 which implies a design in the mind of God. Surely 

 man is on earth the present end of this process, 

 and his spiritual qualities, his love of beauty, 

 goodness, and truth, are its crown. Surely, more- 

 over, the God Who by a design extending over 

 hundreds of millions of years has called these 

 spiritual qualities into existence is Himself a 

 spiritual Being AV'ho made spiritual man for com- 

 munion with Himself. And, last of all, surely the 

 finest products of evolution have not been made 

 for nothing. And yet, in the distant future, when 

 all life vanishes from the earth, as it certainly 

 must, heroes and saints will in vain have gained 

 knowledge of God, in vain have spent their 

 strength, unless they continue to live eternally in 

 the spiritual world. 



Evolution seemed disastrous to faith tun 

 generations ago because men fixed their attention 

 narrowly on but one part of the process. Now a 

 wider vista seems to be coming into view as 

 theories are tested by experiment and unified by 

 the speculative reason. From some fundamental 

 stuff in the universe the electrons arose. From 

 them came matter. From matter life emerged. 

 From life came mind. From mind spiritual con- 

 sciousness developed. .\t every stage, in this 

 vast process and progress, something new has 

 come, we know not how, into existence. There 

 was a time when matter, life, mind, the soul of 

 man were not ; but now they arc. Fach has arisen 



