III. A Bolder Language 483 



spite of adulation, to the advance of sober religious and moral 

 science. 



And this result will be due to Darwin, first because by raising the 

 dignity of natural science, he encouraged the development of the 

 scientific mind ; secondly because he gave to religious students the 

 example of patient and ardent investigation ; and thirdly because by 

 the pressure of naturalistic criticism the religious have been driven 

 to ascertain the causes of their own convictions, a work in which they 

 were not without the sympathy of men of science 1 . 



In leaving the subject of scientific religious inquiry, I will only 

 add that I do not believe it receives any important help — and 

 certainly it suffers incidentally much damaging interruption — from 

 the study of abnormal manifestations or abnormal conditions of 

 personality. 



(3) Both of the above effects seem to me of high, perhaps the 

 very highest, importance to faith and to thought. But, under the 

 third head, I name two which are more directly traceable to the 

 personal work of Darwin, and more definitely characteristic of the age 

 in which his influence was paramount : viz. the influence of the two 

 conceptions of evolution and natural selection upon the doctrine of 

 creation and of design respectively. 



It is impossible here, though it is necessary for a complete sketch 

 of the matter, to distinguish the different elements and channels of 

 this Darwinian influence ; in Darwin's own writings, in the vigorous 

 polemic of Huxley, and strangely enough, but very actually for 

 popular thought, in the teaching of the definitely anti-Darwinian 

 evolutionist Spencer. 



1 The scientific rank of its writer justifies the insertion of the following letter from 

 the late Sir John Burdon-Sanderson to rne. In the lecture referred to I had described the 

 methods of Professor Moseley in teaching Biology as affording a suggestion of the scientific 

 treatment of religion. 



Oxford, 



April 30, 1902. 

 Dear Sir, 



I feel that I must express to you my thanks for the discourse which I had the 

 pleasure of listening to yesterday afternoon. 



I do not mean to say that I was able to follow all that you said as to the identity of 

 Method in the two fields of Science and Religion, but I recognise that the "mysticism " 

 of which you spoke gives us the only way by which the two fields can be brought into 

 relation. 



Among much that was memorable, nothing interested me more than what you said of 



No one, I am sure, knew better than you the value of his teaching and in what that 

 value consisted. 



Yours faithfully, 



J. BURDON-SANDERSON. 

 31—2 



