4IO NATURE AND MAN. 



animals, can now be so fully accounted for by natural agencies, as 

 to afford no evidence whatever of an originating intention, a 

 creative purpose. 



Now if I regarded this claim as scientifically valid, I should 

 unhesitatingly counsel you to abandon your former position 

 without any attempt to defend it. For if we look back at the 

 results of former conflicts, we see that nothing has been more 

 injurious to theology than the persistence of theologians in 

 antiquated error. We of the present time can only wonder at the 

 obstinacy with which the self-styled " orthodox " have clung to 

 the idea that the world with its living inhabitants was created in 

 six successive days of the year 4004 B.C., the Creator resting from 

 his labours on the seventh ; that our own terrestrial globe is the 

 fixed centre of the universe — sun and moon, stars and planets, 

 revolving around it every twenty-four hours ; that not more than 

 6000 years have elapsed since man was first called into being ; and 

 that the Noachian Deluge extended over the whole globe and 

 destroyed all the animals then living on its surface, except the few 

 pairs that found a refuge in the ark. As each of these positions 

 has been successively impugned by scientific research, theologians 

 have raised the cry that the foundations of Christianity were being 

 undermined ; and yet they have now, tacitly if not openly, agreed 

 to abandon them all, as ancient traditions altogether destitute of 

 historical value. That theology has gained and not lost by this 

 abandonment, I do not suppose that any one now doubts ; the 

 lamp of truth must always shine brighter, when no longer 

 darkened by the mists of error. But theologians have not come 

 out unharmed from the conflict ; for they have given their 

 opponents a right to charge them with either a wilful blindness 

 to scientific truth, or an intellectual incapacity to recognize it ; 

 and this lesson should not be lost upon us of the present time. 



I cannot doubt that all whom I am now addressing agree with 

 me in the conviction that Theology can only maintain its ground 

 in the future, by placing itself in accord with the highest scientific 

 thought of the time, — by readily accepting all that science reveals 

 to us in regard to the Order of Nature, — and by rigorously ab- 

 staining from all attempts to fetter or discourage its advance. 

 Such has ever been the teaching of one to whom we all look as 



