TRUE LESSON OF PROTESTANTISM 



him because he has not given us a complete and 

 final system of theology into the bargain. But 

 Mr. Spencer's answer further illustrates very 

 well the philosophic attitude of the present age. 

 The present age is occupied, above all things, 

 in investigating the intimate constitution of the 

 material universe, and tracing therefrom its past 

 history and its future career. The conception of 

 evolution is everywhere being substituted for 

 that of special creation ; and this involves the 

 most extensive and thorough change that has 

 ever taken place in men's thoughts about the 

 world they live in. For the present, this busi- 

 ness absorbs all the most active and original 

 minds, so that no time is left for metaphysical 

 speculations. We are becoming wrapt in the 

 study of origins, as the men of the thirteenth 

 century were wrapt in the study of particulars 

 and universals. But there is no likelihood that 

 this will always be so. By and by all educated 

 people will be evolutionists, and then it will be 

 seen, more clearly than it is now, that while the 

 doctrine of evolution has enormously increased 

 our knowledge of the phenomenal universe, it 

 really leaves all ultimate questions as much open 

 for discussion as they ever were. It is Mr. 

 Spencer himself who has said that every new 

 physical problem leads at once to a metaphysi- 

 cal problem that we can neither solve nor elude. 

 Solve it doubtless we cannot, elude it we also 

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