26 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



they might feel after him and find him, though he is not 

 far from each one of us." Whether this idea of God 

 be called a special revelation of truth to our race, or 

 be regarded as naturally evolved out of life's condi- 

 tions, apparently matters but little. The main thing is 

 that our race has the idea of God, that it entertains 

 and cherishes a profound, supreme ideal of law and 

 beauty, of aspiration and longing, of love and duty. 

 For to say that the idea is the product of an upward 

 evolution, of a gradual development, really explains 

 nothing. That is a mere change of terms, a novel 

 method of phrasing. The basic question will always 

 remain. Why has such a creature as man been 

 evolved out of evolutionary conditions of life which 

 constrain him to develop a conscience, to deify his 

 moral ideas as sacred duties, to spiritualize the unseen 

 powers of nature? To answer dogmatically that it 

 has all been due to blind chance appears hardly tenable. 

 A reasonable, unprejudiced human being would rather 

 argue that these upward aspirations and needs of the 

 mind and soul tended to prove the probable certainty 

 of their ultimate fulfilment. For is it not unthinkable 

 to you that the river should rise higher than its source, 

 that the part should rise to be greater than the whole, 

 that the creature should rise above the creator? 



"A fire-mist and a planet 



A crystal and a cell 

 A jelly-fish and a saurian, 



And a cave where the cave-men dwell; 

 Then a sense of law and beauty, 



