288 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
God's revelation of Himself in nature. The better 
we know the Bible and the better we know nature 
the clearer this will be to us. 
Perhaps the most severe shock that has come to 
the mind of religious man from the teachings of 
science has been the at first almost unsupportable 
idea that man is the descendant of creatures of which 
the ape is to-day the nearest representative. He had 
learned from Genesis the altogether adorable con- 
ception that he was made in the image of his Maker. 
It lifted him; it strengthened him; it gave him more 
power to struggle. He might know that he had 
marred that likeness by wrong-doing, he might un- 
derstand that the fulness of the glory of God’s image 
could not shine through his own face. Yet he be- 
lieved that he was, in spite of all his imperfections, 
made in the image of his Maker. Now comes this 
horrible linkage with a miserable brute to either shock 
and confound him or to degrade him. We can easily 
imagine, some of us have bitterly experienced, the 
shock of this changed conception. But it was only 
because we mistook the clothing for the truth in both 
cases. We read science in its own terms; we read 
Genesis in its own terms. They did not use the 
same language and they jarred us to the very soul. 
Slowly, however, we are coming out of the darkness 
of that battle; slowly the glorious light of the beauti- 
