130 "REV. C. GODFREY ASHWIN, M.A. 
supposing the present favourite theories should nigel be 
received as facts. 
Darwin, in speaking of his conclusions reepecune the 
descent of man,* says: “‘I am aware that the conclusions 
arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as 
highly irreligious; but he who thus denounces them 
is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the 
origin of man, as a distinct species, by descent from some 
lower form, through the laws of variation and natural 
‘selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through 
the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth of the species 
and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence 
of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of 
blind chance.”’ Dr. Asa Gray says: + ‘‘ There is no tendency 
in the doctrine of variation and natural selection to weaken 
the foundations of natural theology, for, consistently with the 
derivative hypothesis of species, we may hold any of the 
popular views respecting the manner in which the changes 
of the natural world are brought'about.” And Tyndall, in the 
magnificent scientific prose poem which constituted his address 
on ‘‘ the scientific use of the imagination,” before the British 
Association at Liverpool, m 1870, in considering the 
question whether the commencement of life was a new crea- 
tion, after the earth had been brought into a state for its 
reception, or whether it was an evolution from previously 
existing matter, says: ‘‘We long to know something of 
our origin. If the evolution hypothesis be correct, even 
this unsatisfied yearning must have come to us across 
the ages which separate the unconscious primeval mist from 
the consciousness of to-day. .... Fear not the evolution 
hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith 
in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by old 
Gamaliel, when he said, ‘ If it be of God ye cannot overthrow 
it. Under the fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis 
is sure to. be dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. 
Trust me, its existence in the mind is quite compatible with 
the simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the 
term Christian has been applied. It does not solve, it does 
not profess to solve, the ultimate mystery of the universe. It 
leaves, in fact, that mystery untouched.” 
True, they are careful to express their Agnosticism of the 
origin of the source of the ‘force which set the mechanism 
of nature” going. ‘Thus, speaking for all scientists, Tyndall 
* Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 395. 
+ Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, 4th edition, p. 551. 
