Evolution as Related to Religious Thought. 337 



more fundamentally religious than the system of a consist- 

 ent evolutionist. " For clearly," as John Fiske has said, 

 " when you say of a moral belief that it is a product of 

 Evolution, you imply that it is something which the uni- 

 verse through untold ages has been laboring to bring forth, 

 and you ascribe to it a value in proportion to the enormous 

 effort it has cost to produce it." The Evolutionist is not 

 talking rhetoric, but science, when he declares that the dis- 

 tinction between right and wrong is rooted deep in the 

 foundations of the world. When Wordsworth, in his " Ode 

 to Duty," sings : — 



"Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong 

 And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong," 



he is not more poetical than scientific. For the same un- 

 ending genesis that evolved the original nebula into suns 

 and stars has wrought into the inmost substance of the 

 universe the principles of right and wrong. " Human re- 

 sponsibility," as Prof. Fiske has said, "is made more strict 

 and solemn than ever when the Eternal Power that lives in 

 every event of the universe is seen to be in the deepest 

 possible sense the author of the moral law that should guide 

 our lives, and in obedience to which lies our only guarantee 

 of the happiness which is incorruptible — which neither 

 inevitable misfortune nor unmerited obloquy can ever take 

 away." 



It is no ghost of a religion which appeals to us with 

 thoughts and sanctions such as these. It is a veritable 

 religion, " capable of affecting human life by acting on the 

 human spirit" as no substitute for religion can do, even 

 one so high and noble as the so-called Eeligion of Human- 

 ity. For it not only gives to moral sanctions 



"an equal date 

 With Andes and with Ararat," 



but, seeing that the moral law is rooted in the foundations 

 of the universe, the universe is moralized by this percep- 

 tion ; the infinite dark of the unknown orbs itself into a 

 Sun of Kighteousness with healing in its wings. 



"Thus he dwells in all 

 From life's minute beginnings up at last 



To man 



So in man's self arise 

 August anticipations, symbols, types 

 Of a dim splendor ever on before." 



