136 WHAT IS DARWINISM? 



the doctrine that belief in a personal God is 

 necessary to any religion worthy of the name, 

 is a mere matter of opinion. Tyndall, Carpen- 

 ter, and Henry Thompson, teach that prayer is 

 a superstitious absurdity ; Herbert Spencer, 

 ■whom they call their " great, philosopher," 

 i. e., the man who does their thinking, labors 

 to prove that there cannot be a personal God, 

 or human soul or self; that moral laws are mere 

 " generalizations of utility," or, as Carl Vogt 

 says, that self respect, and not the will of God, 

 is the ground and rule of moral obligation. If 

 any protest be made against such doctrines, we 

 are told that scientific truth cannot be put 

 down by denunciation (or as Vogt says, by 

 barking). So doubtless the Pharisees, when 

 our blessed Lord called them hypocrites and a 

 generation of vipers, and said : " Ye compass 

 sea and land to make one proselyte ; and when 

 he is made, ye make him twofold more the 

 child of hell than yourselves," doubtless 

 thought that that was a poor way to refute 

 their theory, that holiness and salvation were 

 to be secured by church-membership and 

 church-rites. Nevertheless, as those words 

 were the words of Christ, they were a thun- 

 derbolt which reverberates through all time and 



