754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EVOLUTION AS TAUGHT IN A THEOLOGICAL 



SEMINARY. 



Bt eollo ogden. 



AT the time of the last hearing of the case of Prof. Woodrow 

 before the General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian 

 Church, at Baltimore, many of the Johns Hopkins students em- 

 braced the opportunity of a lifetime to listen to the expositions of 

 the doctrine of evolution made by so many of the divines of that 

 gathering. It is said that inextinguishable laughter was excited 

 among these young men by their learning how greatly their in- 

 competent professors had misled them as to what evolution really 

 was and meant. It is not often that a theologian can stop to afford 

 such enlightenment to the inquirer in science ; and, when he does, 

 it is an obvious duty for one finding such priceless light hidden 

 under a bushel to discover it to the world. 



The bushel, in the case in hand, is the two volumes of " Dog- 

 matic Theology," recently published by Prof. Shedd, of Union 

 Theological Seminary, embodying the lectures which he gives in 

 that institution ; and the little candle which would surely cast its 

 beams far in this naughty world if really given a chance to shine, 

 is the exposition and annihilation of the doctrine of evolution as 

 given in the chapter on " Creation," vol. i, pp. 499-515. The pro- 

 fessor opens the discussion by admitting that there is a "true 

 evolution." This whets curiosity, until it is explained to be the 

 individual development of an organism from its embryo. This 

 being the only " true " evolution, all other kinds are, of course, 

 false, and accordingly are labeled forthwith " pseudo-evolution," 

 under the burden of which eminently calm and philosophical epi- 

 thet they have to stagger all through the subsequent pages. A 

 better name, however, could not be devised to fit that caricature 

 of the theory which Dr. Shedd sets himself to explain before re- 

 futing. It is probably unwitting caricature ; the professor is an 

 unconscious humorist. It is, at any rate, charitable to suppose 

 that he jumbles up several different theories into one through 

 ignorance. It would be hard to excuse, on any other ground, his 

 identifying the views of Darwin with those of Spencer and 

 Haeckel. Chauncey Wright long ago pointed out the great dif- 

 ferences between these writers. Whatever may be thought of the 

 general theorizings of the last two, it is clear that their method is 

 not the patiently inductive one of Darwin. They are wide-rang- 

 ing philosophers and rigid systematizers. Darwin was the most 

 matter-of-fact and plodding naturalist, who dreaded of all things 

 getting his feet off the earth. He felt himself lost once out of 



