EVOLUTION AND THE FALL 

 LECTURE I 



MODERN DIFFICULTIES 



It is indisputable that difficulties of faith are very 

 widely felt to-day; and multitudes are ceasing to regard 

 the contents of Christian doctrine either as capable of 

 proof or as coming within the range of that kind of 

 certainty which is ordinarily termed knowledge. 



It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that 

 difficulties of faith are peculiarly modern. No doubt 

 they are more widely felt in our day than in previous 

 ages of Christian history; but this is largely because 

 education is more general than ever before, and the 

 problems which try the souls of advanced thinkers 

 are being ventilated and discussed everywhere, instead 

 of being, as in earlier centuries, considered only by 

 scholars and philosophers. It is an age in which almost 

 every one knows, or thinks that he knows, a little about 

 everything; and a little knowledge is a dangerous 

 thing, since it raises problems without enabling men 

 either to solve them or to realize that their inability to 

 solve them is not necessarily a reason for unbelief. 



But every age has its own difficulties of faith; and 

 it is not invariably a proof of insincerity that professing 



