1886 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY j 3 ¥ 



skill — in using the weapons of debate, he was not to avoid 

 it any more than he was to avoid the east wind when he 

 went to Bournemouth from early in February till the end 

 of March, of which he writes on February 23 : — 



The " English Naples " is rather Florentine so far as a 

 bitter cold east wind rather below than above o°C. goes, but 

 from all I hear it is a deal better than London, and I am pick- 

 ing up in spite of it. I wish I were a Holothuria, and could get 

 on without my viscera. I should do splendidly then. 



Here he wrote a long article on the " Evolution of 

 Theology " (Collected Essays, iv. 287) which appeared in the 

 March and April numbers of the Nineteenth Century. It 

 was a positive statement of the views he had arrived at, 

 which underlay the very partial — and therefore misleading 

 — exposition of them possible in controversy. He dealt with 

 the subject, not with reference to the truth or falsehood of 

 the notions under review, but purely as a question of anthro- 

 pology, " a department of biology to which I have at vari- 

 ous times given a good deal of attention." Starting with 

 the familiar ground of the Hebrew Scriptures, he thus ex- 

 plains the paleontological method he proposes to adopt : — 



In the venerable record of ancient life, miscalled a book, 

 when it is really a library comparable to a selection of works 

 from English literature between the times of Beda and those of 

 Milton, we have the stratified deposits (often confused and even 

 with their natural order inverted) left by the stream of the 

 intellectual and moral life of Israel during many centuries. And, 

 embedded in these strata, there are numerous remains of forms 

 of thought which once lived, and which, though often unfor- 

 tunately mere fragments, are of priceless value to the anthro- 

 pologist. Our task is to rescue these from their relatively un- 

 important surroundings, and by careful comparison with exist- 

 ing forms of theology to make the dead world which they record 

 live again. 



A subsequent letter to Professor Lewis Campbell, bears 

 upon this essay. It was written in answer to an enquiry 

 prompted by the comparison here drawn between the primi- 

 tive spiritual theories of the books of Judges and Samuel, 

 and the very similar development of ideas among the Ton- 



