EDWIN G. CONKLIN 83 



extinction cannot be the goal of a thousand million 

 years of evolution. 



Contemplate all this work of time, 

 This giant laboring in his youth, 

 Nor dream that human love and truth 



Are dying nature's earth and lime. 



Rationalism Not at Fault 



Let us go back and see where we took the trail that 

 led to this slough of despond. Certainly not in fol- 

 lowing the light of reason in dealing with these great 

 problems, for although we may, with Darwin, doubt 

 whether the mind of man can be trusted when it draws 

 such grand conclusions, it is not reasoning itself that 

 is at fault but poor reasoning. This is the faculty 

 which, more than any other, distinguishes man from 

 all other creatures, it is, in the words of a modern 

 heretic, Robert Ingersoll, "but a feeble flame by stum- 

 blers carried in a starless night, and yet it is our only 

 light." Even revelation must be interpreted by reason, 

 and those who advise us in the interests of preserving 

 our childhood's faith to "take our reason captive" are 

 counselling what is not only impossible but positively 

 irreligious for we are commanded to "worship the 

 Lord our God with all our mind." Charles Kingsley 

 once said: "The God who satisfies our conscience ought 

 more or less to satisfy our reason also. . . . For the 

 demands of reason, as none knew better than good 

 Bishop Butler, must be and ought to be satisfied." 

 Will any fundamentalist maintain that we alone of all 

 living creatures were given reason to deceive us and 

 to lure us to destruction? The old warcry against 

 rationalism will no longer avail ; we will not be fright- 



