THE DECADENCE OF THEOLOGY 125 



follows that man is of animal origin, that he is fitted 

 to his environment rather than it to him, that Nature 

 befriends and furthers him when he obeys her laws, 

 and crushes him when he crosses them. Science 

 knows no other plan of redemption than the survival 

 of the fittest, knows no other day of creation than 

 this day, knows no other fall of man save the present 

 daily fall of ignorance and vice, knows no heaven 

 or hell save that we make for ourselves, knows no 

 immortality save the persistence of life and force, 

 and finally knows no God save the Infinite Power 

 that fills and upholds all things. 



Science does not prove that miracles or the super- 

 natural is impossible, but it begets in the mind a 

 conception of the universe which finds no place for 

 these things. It discloses a harmony and a com- 

 pleteness which leaves no room for alien and extra- 

 neous forces. It is a complete solvent of the old 

 notions. Theology recognized it as its mortal enemy 

 at once and has fought it inch by inch. Every 

 generalization of science has been so much territory 

 wrested from theology. What a blow to it was the 

 Copernican system of astronomy ! How Newton cut 

 under it with his law of gravitation, how Darwin 

 with his theory of the origin of species ! It has 

 been shorn of its influence like the Pope of his tem- 

 poral power ; it is confined almost entirely to the 

 region of the unverifiable, and here it is safe. It 

 may hurl its anathemas at the man of science, it may 

 grant or refuse future probation to the heathen, it 

 may consign the pagan philosophers to purgatory, it 



