400 The Critics of Evolution. [June, 
tion. In it he attempts to explain the facts of nature on the 
theory of creation as opposed to evolution, while he denounces 
the advocates of Darwinism, and boldly asserts “that evolution 
as an hypothesis has no basis in experience or in scientific fact.” 
This work was written in 1873. He has so well described the 
character of the obstructionist and irreconcilable in the extracts 
above given from a more recent paper,! that we may almost imag- 
ine that he had himself in view, and that larger knowledge of the 
accumulating facts of evolution has had some influence upon his 
position as respects its scientific basis. 
Prof. J. W. Dawson is, I believe, the only naturalist of deserved 
reputation who repudiates the established truths of evolution ; yet 
he deems it his duty to apologize for the supposed “ conflict of 
science and religion,” and in the Princeton Review for November, 
1879, appeared the following delivery from his pen. The pursuit 
of science has not entirely failed, even in his case, to widen his 
mental scope, and render him wiser than his theological proclivi- 
ties would alone have left him: 
- Perhaps there is no part of the Bible in which the teaching of 
nature with reference to divine things is more fully represented 
than in the Book of Job, and I am inclined to think that nota 
few, even of religious men, fail to see precisely the significance of 
the address of the Almighty to Job, in the concluding chapter of 
that book. Job is tortured and brought near to death by severe 
bodily disease. His friends have exhausted all their divinity and 
philosophy upon him in the vain effort to convince him that he 
deserves this infliction for special and aggravated sins; at length 
the Almighty intervenes and gives the final decision. But instead 
of discussing the ethical and theological difficulties of the case, 
He enters into a sublime and poetical description of nature. He 
speaks of the heaven above, of the atmosphere, its vapors, and 
its storms, and of the habits and powers of animals. In short 
Job is treated to a lecture on natural history, yet this instantane- 
ously affects what the arguments of his friends have altogether 
failed to produce, and Job humbles himself before God in contri- 
tion and repentance. * * * 
take a lesson from the Bible itself? (2) May there not be wary 
in our time who like Job ‘have heard of him with the hearing O 
1« The So-called Conflict of Science and Religion.” By Principal J. W. Daw- 
son, of McGill University, in Zhe Science Monthly, Vol x, pp- 72; 74- 
