PREFACE 9 



an undertaking. Each investigator takes the facts 

 and experiences of others, and then begins to build 

 and expand until he too reaches his limit. 



There are theologians to-day who halt and ques- 

 tion God's goodness, and His willingness to watch 

 over all His creatures with a tender care, ignoring 

 the fact that God has promised to restore all ani- 

 mal life to primeval peace and happiness. 



In consequence they sink into a kind of fatalism, 

 which paralyzes their faculties until they hold 

 no definite ideas regarding the vastness and good- 

 ness of God. 



From day to day and year to year we are coming 

 in contact with established theories which need re- 

 forming and as a consequence modern theology 

 must bend in that direction. Men of education are 

 sometimes ready to object to or repudiate doctrines 

 which lead to an extension of the higher attributes 

 of the Creator, if they seem to oppose long estab- 

 lished creeds and dogmas. They naturally wish to 

 find objections to any theory which is out of 

 the usual line of thought, and so take the well- 

 recognized means which have been so often em- 

 ployed in keeping back advancing truths. 



The great majority of people drift along, many 



