ITT, A Bolder Language 483 
spite of adulation, to the advance of sober religious and moral 
science. 
And this result will be due to Darwin, first because by raising the 
dignity of natural science, he encouraged the development of the 
scientific mind ; secondly because he gave to religious students the 
example of patient and ardent investigation ; and thirdly because by 
the pressure of naturalistic criticism the religious have been driven 
to ascertain the causes of their own convictions, a work in which they 
were not without the sympathy of men of science. 
In leaving the subject of scientific religious inquiry, I will only 
add that I do not believe it receives any important help—and 
certainly it suffers incidentally much damaging interruption—from 
the study of abnormal manifestations or abnormal conditions of 
personality. 
(3) Both of the above effects seem to me of high, perhaps the 
very highest, importance to faith and to thought. But, under the 
third head, I name two which are more directly traceable to the 
personal work of Darwin, and more definitely characteristic of the age 
in which his influence was paramount: viz. the influence of the two 
conceptions of evolution and natural selection upon the doctrine of 
creation and of design respectively. 
It is impossible here, though it is necessary for a complete sketch 
of the matter, to distinguish the different elements and channels of 
this Darwinian influence ; in Darwin’s own writings, in the vigorous 
polemic of Huxley, and strangely enough, but very actually for 
popular thought, in the teaching of the definitely anti-Darwinian 
evolutionist Spencer. 
1 The scientific rank of its writer justifies the insertion of the following letter from 
the late Sir John Burdon-Sanderson to me. In the lecture referred to I had described the 
methods of Professor Moseley in teaching Biology as affording a suggestion of the scientific 
treatment of religion. 
Oxrorp, 
April 30, 1902. 
Dear Sir, 
I feel that I must express to you my thanks for the discourse which I had the 
pleasure of listening to yesterday afternoon. 
I do not mean to say that I was able to follow all that you said as to the identity of 
Method in the two fields of Science and Religion, but I recognise that the ‘mysticism ” 
of which you spoke gives us the only way by which the two fields can be brought into 
relation. 
Among much that was memorable, nothing interested me more than what you said of 
Moseley. 
No one, I am sure, knew better than you the value of his teaching and in what that 
value consisted. 
Yours faithfully, 
J. BURDON-SANDERSON. 
31—2 
