334 Evolution as Related to Religious Thought. 



source of everything that is, known as he manifests him- 

 self in all things we can see or hear or apprehend in any 

 way with sense or mind, the God of Evolution does not in- 

 vite to wonder and to mystery alone. He does invite to 

 these with a persuasion that grows every day more irresist- 

 ible as - the unknown is shot through and through with 

 gleams from that great sun of knowledge which is mount- 

 ing steadily our morning sky. But he invites no less to 

 those attitudes and beatitudes of mind and heart which Mr. 

 Frederic Harrison, that eloquent apostle of the Religion of 

 Humanity, declares to be the best religion has to give — 

 "love, awe, sympathy, gratitude, consciousness of depend- 

 ence, reverence for majesty, goodness, creative energy and 

 life." The religion of Evolution is not, in the phrase of 

 Mr. Harrison, "a religion only to stare at." It is a religion 

 which sends us forth to work for higher truth and better 

 service among men. 



What word has it concerning immortality ? The most 

 encouraging that any system of philosophy or science has 

 yet offered to the world. Much of the difficulty that Evo- 

 lution is imagined to suggest was just as palpable before 

 the time of Darwin and Spencer. If man has descended 

 from the ape and the ascidian, were they also immortal ? 

 If not, when did immortality become the privilege of the 

 individual ? But there is no difficulty presented by the 

 development of man from lower and the lowest forms, which 

 is not presented equally by embryology. The embryologi- 

 cal history of the individual resumes the development of 

 the race. Beginning with a germ which cannot be distin- 

 guished from that of any animal or plant, he passes through 

 fish-like and ape-like stages until he emerges a "radiating, 

 jaculating fellow," monarch of all he surveys. At what 

 stage of this development is the gift of immortality be- 

 stowed ? The difficulty is eVery whit as great as that pre- 

 sented by the development of the species. There is no 

 slightest proof of immortality; only a showing that the 

 ascent of man from lower forms adds nothing, as it is very 

 commonly supposed to do, to our embarassment. Mean- 

 time our embarassment is seriously lessened by our appre- 

 ciation of the fact that in the course of cosmic development 

 we have had the organic produced from the inorganic, and 

 we have had the self-conscious produced from the uncon- 

 scious. In either case we have, apparently, a greater leap 



