288 REV. PROF, A. CALDECOTT, D.LITT., D.D., ON 
conflict which will dwarf into triviality many of the conten 
tions which at present cause our differences and oppositions. 
The believer in the higher religion is plainly committed to a 
high doctrine of personality. For him religious education and 
training constitutes a potent force, more powerful than inheri- 
tance. Religion greets each soul as it appears and invests it at 
once with an environment which shall be a matrix for its personal 
development, knowing that even from unpromising “stock” 
souls of pure lustre and high spirituality are possible because 
they are found; and believing that the reason is that they 
come not through lower ranges of being but direct from the 
Eternal Spirit. 
In reviewing from the point of view of the Christian believer 
what I have attempted to sketch I would offer two reflections. 
Let us on no account set ourselves in opposition to the evidence 
that is offered us that an insight into the procedure of Heredity 
has been gained such as was never before in man’s possession. 
There is still much difficulty and much darkness, but it is for us 
to acclaim whatever is brought into hght. The scope of 
Heredity in the physical sphere, over the range of plant-life, 
and the animal world, and of human nature on its bodily side is 
widened or rather deepened, and conceptions of its operation 
sketched out for us. These conceptions have been won by 
arduous toil and acute intelligence on the part of our fellow- 
workers in the field of knowledge, and we congratulate them on 
their successes. In the area of the lower ranges of conscious- 
ness, however, there is not any similar gain: most of the claims 
made are of an a priori nature, and therefore there is no call 
upon us, at present at least, to definitely take a side as to the 
possibility in the scope of heredity in mind in its lower stages. 
For myself I am prepared to accept it to a considerable extent. 
But I hold that we are called upon to decline to follow 
any attempt to claim heredity for the personal spirit of 
man in its own central selfhood, and in its large power 
of taking up and controlling the lower processes of 
consciousness. In the Old Testament we see the gradual 
advance towards a recognition of the value of the individual, 
and the Gospel is based upon it, upon the infinite 
value of the soul, as Harnack puts it, 7e., upon the incom- 
mensurability of the soul with all else that is in the world we 
know ; and this amounts to a protest against transferring to the 
spiritual world laws which have been discovered and established 
only in a totally different sphere. This does not assert 
individualism in a way which opposes the corporate view of 
