RELIGION AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 513 



there is in the whole universe, and where it is situated, we not only have no 

 knowledge, but can hardly be said to be on the way to have knowledge. Why 

 its qualities are what they are, and why it alone possesses all these qualities ; 

 how long it has existed, and how long it will continue to exist, these questions 

 we are unable to answer. The existence of the many forms of matter, the prop- 

 erties of each form, the distribution of each : all this Science must in the last 

 resort assume. 



But I say in the last resort. For it is possible, and Science soon makes it 

 evident that it is true, that some forms of matter grow out of other forms. There 

 are endless combinations. And the growth of new out of old forms is of neces- 

 sity a sequence, and falls under the law of invariability of sequences, and be- 

 comes the subject-matter of science. As in each separate case Science asserts 

 each event of to-day to have followed by a law of invariable sequence on the 

 events of yesterday ; the earth has reached the precise point in its orbit now 

 which was determined by the law of gravitation as applied to its motion at the 

 point which it reached a moment ago; the weather of the present hour has come 

 by meteorological laws out of the weather of the last hour; the crops and the 

 flocks now found on the surface of the habitable earth are the necessary outcome of 

 preceding harvests and preceding flocks, and of all that has been done to main- 

 tain and increase them ; so, too, if we look at the universe as a whole, the pre- 

 sent condition of that whole is, if the scientific postulate of invariable sequence 

 be admitted, and in as far as it is admitted, the necessary outcome of its former 

 condition ; and all the various forms of matter, whether living or inanimate, 

 must, for the same reason and with the same limitation, be the necessary out- 

 come of preceding forms of matter. This is the foundation of the doctrine of 

 evolution. 



Now, stated in this abstract form, this doctrine will be, and indeed if science 

 be admitted at all must be, accepted by everybody. Even the Roman Church, 

 which holds that God is perpetually interfering with the course of nature, either 

 in the interests of religious truth or out of loving kindness to his creatures, yet 

 will acknowledge that the number of such interferences almost disappears in com- 

 parison of the countless millions of instances in which there is no reason to be- 

 lieve in any interference at all. And, if we look at the universe as a whole, the 

 general proposition as stated above is quite unaffected by the infinitesimal excep- 

 tion which is to be made by a believer in frequent miracles. But when this propo- 

 sition is applied in detail it at once introduces the possibility of an entirely new 

 history of the material universe. For this universe, as we see it, is almost entirely 

 made up of composite and not of simple substances. We have been able to 

 analyze all the substances that we know into a comparatively small number of 

 simple elements — some usually solid, some liquid, some gaseous. But these 

 simple elements are rarely found uncombined with others; most of those which 

 we meet with in a pure state have been taken out of combination and reduced 

 to simplicity by human agency. The various metals that we ordinarily use are 

 mostly found in a state of ore, and we do not generally obtain them pure except 



