

The Religious \Vork of Science* 497 



McCosh then points out that there are difficulties with the 

 doctrine, and adds: " 1 am not sure that religion has any 

 interest in holding absolutely by one side or other of this 

 question which it is for scientific men to settle. I am not 

 sure that religion is entitled to insist that every species of 

 insect has been created by a special fiat of God, with no 

 secondary agent employed." Dr. McCosh again says: "It 

 is useless to tell the younger naturalists that there is no 

 truth in the doctrine of development, for they know that 

 there is truth which is not to be set aside by denunciation. 

 Religious philosophers might be more profitably employed 

 in showing them the religious aspects of the doctrine of 

 development, and some would be grateful to any who 

 would help them to keep their old faith in God and the 

 Bible with their faith in science." 



In the discussion which followed, which was free from 

 bitterness, and which, if evincing some ignorance, evinced 

 also a wholesome desire for knowledge, one of the dele- 

 gates the Rev. Dr. Brown, of large opportunities, as he 

 represented St. Petersburg, Cape of Good Hope, and Ber- 

 wick-upon-Tweed declared that, as a botanist of twenty 

 years' standing, he accepted the development hypothesis. 

 Indeed, he declared his conviction "that the confirmation 

 or general adoption of the hypothesis of development will 

 ultimately exercise a beneficial influence on religion," which 

 benign influence will be due to the labours of the scientific 

 men who have worked the truth out in the pitiless hailstorm 

 of general execration. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, the Boaner- 

 ges of orthodoxy, neither denied the doctrine of evolution 

 nor denounced its believers as unchristian, and was only so- 

 licitous about its theological relations. He said : " The great 

 question which divides theists from atheists, Christians from 

 unbelievers, is this, Is development an intellectual process 

 guided by God, or is it a blind process of unintelligible, un- 

 conscious force, which knows no end and adopts no means ? " 



