187? THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH 81 



and were not over mucli heard or heeded.* For the 

 most paxt, those on the Christian side adopted the 

 line taken by the Bishop of Oxford in his review of 

 Mr. Darwin's ' Origin of Species ' in the ' Quarterly 

 Eeview,' and in his famous speech at Oxford during 

 the British Association of 1860. 



Certainly the outlook now is more encouraging 

 than it was twenty years ago. 



It has been well and eloquently said by one than 

 whom none is more qualified to speak on this subject : ' 

 ' It is quite certain that this scientific obstacle has 

 been, in the main, removed. In part, it has been 

 through the theologians abandoning false claims, and 

 learning, if somewhat unwillingly, that they have no 

 "Bible revelation" in matters of science; in part, it 

 has been through its becoming continually more 

 apparent, that the hmits of scientific "explanation " of 

 nature are soon reached; that the ultimate causes, 

 forces, conditions of natm-e are as unexplained as 

 ever, or rather postulate as ever for their explanation 

 a Divine mind. Thus, if one ' ' argument from design ' ' 

 was destroyed, another was only brought into pro- 

 minence. Xo account which science can give, by 

 discovery or conjecture, of the method of creation, 

 can ever weaken the argument which Hes from the 

 universahty of law, order, and beauty in the universe 

 to the universahty of mind. The mind of man looks 

 forth into nature, and finds nowhere uninteUigible 

 chance, but everywhere an order, a system, a law, a 

 beauty, which corresponds, as greater to less, to his 

 own rational and spiritual intuitions, methods, and 

 expectations. Universal order, inteUigibihty, beauty, 

 mean that something akin to the human spirit, 

 something of which the human spirit is an ofishoot 



I Cf. ' Life and Letters of Dean Church,' p. 154. 



* 'Buying up the Opportunity,' a sermon by the E^v. C. Gore, 

 preached before the University of Oxford, and pubhshed by the S.P.C.K. 



G 



