EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM.^ 



I. THE THEOLOGICAL METHOD. 



The topic -which has been assigned to me speaks volumes 

 for your appreciation of my standing in the order of created 

 things. Why should you think that mine should be the 

 privilege of ushering in the great millennial dawn ? For 

 it would surely be upon us, and the remaining papers of 

 this series would be read by its transcendent light, if I 

 should treat successively of the different parts of the 

 skeleton which in your syllabus of the course is denom- 

 inated ''Evolution and Social Reform: The Theological 

 Method." I shall "make no bones" of setting some parts 

 of this skeleton aside, and some of the others I shall con- 

 sider with that ''leaning to the side of mercy" which dis- 

 tinguishes the clergy from the laity in their public utterance : 

 naturally, because they so much oftener have a chance. 



There was social Form before there was social reform, 

 and this was almost entirely theological or religious. "When 

 due allowance has been made for the over-working of a 

 fascinating theory, M. Fustel de Coulanges's famous work, 

 " The Ancient City," remains a splendid demonstration of 

 the fact that religion theological religion was the orig- 

 inal Founder of Society, determining its structure and its 

 laws. Hence came, as from no other source, that "cake of 

 custom," that definition, that authority of social forms, 

 which was as absolutely essential to the beginnings of 

 society as its ultimate breaking up was to its progress 

 further on. An egg-shell is an excellent protection of the 

 bird's incipient life, but broken it must be some day or else 

 we have no bird. The religion of the hearth, the worship 

 of ancestors, constituted the primitive family, established 

 marriage and paternal authority, fixed the order of relation- 

 ship, consecrated the right of property and the right of in- 

 heritance. The same religion, having formed the family, 

 re-formed it, enlarged it, and extended it, often artificially 

 enough. The legal fictions of antiquity were religious 



* Copyright, 1890, l)y James H. West. 



