204 The Development Theory. 



The system, among scientists, prevails, for 

 all modern researches tend toward system; 

 only an added evidence that God works by 

 system. 



If we direct our inquiries to the domain of 

 geology a similar result follows. Educated 

 men find the evidence overwhelming that God 

 did not create at once the whole continent as 

 men once believed, but that he so directed 

 natural agencies and materials that the nat- 

 ural forces of these acted on by their sur- 

 roundings developed a continent. 



Here, too, the change into a generaliza- 

 tion. God did not stop to create a single fact; 

 he created a vast system of facts. 



And as in both these departments of 

 thought that of chemistry and that of geol- 

 ogy the religious world has accepted these 

 changed views without conscious detriment to 

 religious faith, it must follow that develop- 

 ment as a form of creation, as God's process of 

 creation in at least some departments of his 

 work, is an accepted doctrine and is not athe- 

 istic. 



