Igo THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
from humble conditions to be the glory of our heroes; 
we esteem it an added charm in their strength that 
they should have developed from untoward surround- 
ings. It is not a disgrace to man to have descended 
from the apes. It is to the glory of man that he 
should have ascended from forms not much more 
promising-looking than the apes of to-day. We must 
repeat, however, that the apes were the unprogressive 
members, and hence we must not judge man’s ances- 
tors too harshly. It must have been in them to rise. 
But the great glory in the thought of the humble 
ancestry lies in the possibilities of his future. If out 
of a creature not materially unlike the gibbering ape 
of to-day there should have come, under the guiding 
hand of an Almighty God, creatures with the endow- 
ments and capabilities of man of to-day, then this is 
only an earnest and foretaste of that which may be 
expected in the future. A time will come when man 
shall have risen to heights as far above anything he 
now is as to-day he stands above the ape. Even 
then there seems no end. With Infinite Power as the 
agent, and limitless time in which to work, man would 
be limiting God to an extent unwarranted by the his- 
tory of the past to imagine that His process had 
stopped to-day, and that man, with his many imper- 
fections of body, of mind, and of morals, should be 
the best that is yet to come. There cling to him still 
