132 WHAT IS DARWINISM? 



any scientific fact. Eeligious men believe with 

 Agassiz that facts are sacred. They are reve- 

 lations from God. Christians sacrifice to them, 

 when duly authenticated, their most cherished 

 convictions. That the earth moves, no relig- 

 ious man doubts. When Galileo made that 

 great discovery, the Church was right in not 

 yielding at once to the evidence of an experi- 

 ment which it did not understand. But when 

 the fact was clearly established, no man sets 

 up his interpretation of the Bible in opposition 

 to it. Religious men admit all the facts con- 

 nected with our solar system ; all the facts of 

 geology, and of comparative anatomy, and of 

 biology. Ought not this to satisfy scientific 

 men ? Must we also admit their explanations 

 and inferences ? If we admit that the human 

 embryo passes through various phases, must 

 we admit that man was once a fish, then a bird, 

 then a dog, then an ape, and finally what he 

 now is ? If we admit the similarity of struc- 

 ture in all vertebrates, must we admit the evo- 

 lution of one from another, and all from a 

 primordial germ ? It is to be remembered 

 that the facts are from God, the explanation 

 from men ; and the two are often as far apart 

 as Heaven and its antipode. 



