288 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



God's revelation of Himself in nature. The better 

 we know the Bible and the better we know nature 

 the clearer this will be to us. 



Perhaps the most severe shock that has come to 

 the mind of religious man from the teachings of 

 science has been the at first almost unsupportable 

 idea that man is the descendant of creatures of which 

 the ape is to-day the nearest representative. He had 

 learned from Genesis the altogether adorable con- 

 ception that he was made in the image of his Maker. 

 It lifted him; it strengthened him; it gave him more 

 power to struggle. He might know that he had 

 marred that likeness by wrong-doing, he might un- 

 derstand that the fulness of the glory of God's image 

 could not shine through his own face. Yet he be- 

 lieved that he was, in spite of all his imperfections, 

 made in the image of his Maker. Now comes this 

 horrible linkage with a miserable brute to either shock 

 and confound him or to degrade him. We can easily 

 imagine, some of us have bitterly experienced, the 

 shock of this changed conception. But it was only 

 because we mistook the clothing for the truth in both 

 cases. We read science in its own terms; we read 

 Genesis in its own terms. They did not use the 

 same language and they jarred us to the very soul. 

 Slowly, however, we are coming out of the darkness 

 of that battle; slowly the glorious light of the beauti- 



