AS TO THE EELATIONS OP SCIENCK AKD FAITH. 223 



theology. Yet appropriate evidence, and a great deal of 

 it, favours some kind of evolution ; evidence from many 

 widespread and independent sources ever cumulatively 

 growing. The theory opens new lines of rcsearcli, is con- 

 tinually leading the way to new discoveries, often enables 

 us to prophecy, and is reinforced by fulfilments of its pre- 

 dictions. Thus by the only evidence that can bear on the 

 case the general theory seems fairly established, and ought, 

 we think, to be provisionally accepted. 



On many particular points, as the first origin of life and 

 the origin of man, there are special difficulties. The recent 

 lecture of Professor Hubrecht at the Sesquicentennial of 

 Princeton University shows that the genealogy of man 

 cannot bo traced through either the apes or the lemurs, 

 and that the nearest known ancestral form is aw;iy back in 

 the Eocene formations, and even this one is only possibly 

 ancestral ; a result which rather increases the sense of our 

 solitude, and shows that whether miraculously p)-oduced or 

 more slowly evolved, there must have been something very 

 special in this case, and that our moral nature cannot be ac- 

 counted for on any theory of naturalism. But let nobody 

 fancy from this that the evolution of man is disproved ; at 

 any time discoveries may be made which will change the 

 whole aspect of the question. For the Christian public we 

 think the best attitude at this time is that taken by the 

 late President J. McCosh, in these terms : " If any one asks me 

 if I believe man's body to have come from a brute, I answer 

 that I know not. 1 believe in Revelation, I believe in 

 science, but neither has revealed this to me ; and I restrain 

 a weak curiosity which would teach me to inquire into 

 what cannot be known. Meanwhile, I am sure, and I 

 assert, that man's soul is of a higher order and of a nobler 

 type." 



If any man can prove that evolution is false he Avill find 

 a ready hearing in scientific circles. But the trend of testi- 

 mony goes strongly in the opposite direction ; and men are 

 rendering a poor service to religion who attempt to get up 

 an issue between it and evolution. Such attempts nearly 

 always show misapprehension as to the meaning of evolu- 

 tion. Here an able writer fancies that it can change a rose 

 into a dandelion (which no evolutionist thinks possible), and 

 argues against evolution because it fails to explain the 

 origin of sex — which it, however, explains so well as to 

 tuni this into an argument in its favour. A learned lawyer 



