HARMONIZED WITH EVOLUTION 183 



history is necessarily subversive of the principle of 

 continuity, and therefore must give way to the natu- 

 ralistic view/ 



4. It is between these two views of history at large, 

 and of the factors supposed to be operative in deter- 

 mining its course, that the issue is joined. To one 

 who regards the physical order as complete and self- 

 sufficient, a placing of man in a supernatural state of 

 grace after his origin by natural evolution must appear 

 to be subversive of rational continuity and hopelessly 

 incredible. And his unbelief will be confirmed when 

 he discovers that the earliest human conditions of 

 which any trace remains are completely in line with 

 natural evolution. That they are so we are neither 

 justified by the present conditions of knowledge nor 

 interested in denying. But the chief point in our argu- 

 Iment is that every appearance of breach of continuity 

 'in the occurrence of a primitive state of grace disappears 

 when the larger and more adequate Christian view 

 of history is intelligently adopted. The naturalistic 

 view does not satisfy all the requirements of continuity, 

 for, as we have seen, it leaves several important gaps 

 in natural evolution which require superphysical and 

 supernatural factors to fill. It also raises serious 



1 On the impossibility of ascertaining man's primitive condition 

 by natural investigation, see Fairbairn, Philos. of the Christ. Reli- 

 gion^ p. 204; De La Saussaye, Science of Religion, pp. 28, 29; 

 Ladd, Philos. of Religion, Vol. L, pp. 134-138. Ladd quotes Max 

 Miiller {Anthropological Religion, p. 150) as saying, "We knovi^ now 

 that savage and primitive are very far from meaning the same thing." 

 Cf. Bishop Gore, Creed of the Christian, pp. 43, 44. 



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