THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 5 I 



our inquiry into limits enables us to answer this 

 question with the definite discrimination required. 

 This outcome shows us the narrow limits of evolu- 

 tion as a doctrine of unpretending science. Still 

 more significantly, it brings out the unavoidable 

 limits of evolution as a philosophy, as regards the 

 origin of man and the nature of the eternal crea- 

 tive Power. In short, it teaches us that the 

 answer to the question whether Christianity and 

 evolution are compatible, turns wholly on the stretch 

 that evolution has over existence, especially over 

 human nature. 



But it is time we all understood how finally at 

 variance with the heart of Christian faith and hope 

 is any doctrine of evolution that views the whole 

 of human nature as the product of " continuous 

 creation," — as merely the last term in a process 

 of transmissive causation. The product of such a 

 process could not be morally free, nor, consequently, 

 morally responsible. It must needs be merely a 

 mass of " inherited tendency " ; and, howsoever fair 

 its effect might appear, no life of genuine dutiful- 

 ness, no life of goodness freely chosen, could enter 

 into its being. As a speculative possibility there 

 may be ways of conceiving man thus " continu- 

 ously created " and yet in such relations to the 

 Creator as would provide for his immortality, in 

 the sense merely of his everlasting duration ; Pro- 



