270 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



that they did was weak, and, because weak, harmful. 

 Words effect nothing : it is the power of the Personality 

 that stands behind them. But He ' taught as one having 

 authority and not as the Scribes ', Such was the impres- 

 sion of Him which His disciples received. His words 

 became to them ' the words of life,' seeds which sprang 

 up and bore fruit. That was what was new."^ 



Prof. Jones says : " Truth is not an end but only 

 means ". This does not seem to have been St. Paul's 

 idea. " I count all things to be loss for the excellency of 

 the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord ; " ^ who was 

 the Truth. What he meant was that he longed to arrive 

 at, and embody in himself to the full, the " Truth " or the 

 Perfect Character and Conduct, as represented in Jesus 

 Christ. That was the " end " of his aims. 



Nor am disposed to admit that " even Natural 

 Science now acknowledges that its province is limited 

 and that within that province itself its premises are 

 assumptions and its conclusions only proximately valid ". 

 It is certainly limited by the number of known animals 

 and plants and objects of the inorganic world ; and as 

 investigations proceed, assumptions are of course neces- 

 sary as " working hypotheses " ; but a vast number of 

 conclusions are perfectly valid. The Doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion, for instance, has long passed out of the stage of an 

 hypothesis, and any alternative is now unthinkable. 

 "Darwinism," on the other hand, or the theory of the 

 " Origin of Species dy means of Natural Selection" was a 

 pure assumption and based on errors ; as I have shown 

 above. J^hysics are a branch of Natural Science, and 

 our knowledge of the laws of physical forces is valid ; 

 and with regard to biology and physiology, which Mr. 



1 What i% Christianity ? p. 48. « Phil. iii. 8. 



