THE PRE-REQUISITES OF A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 229 



donne." And, as he justly points out, this formula applies 

 even to the materialists, for, to them — virtually, if not admit- 

 tedly — the true realities are mass and energy, not their 

 subsequent combinations as such. But that an electron should 

 be more real than a horse is surely a philosoijhical paradox, not 

 a scientific. To the creationist this is not so ; and that, not 

 because he has found evidence of gaps in the geological 

 evidences of Evolution — though he may lind them — but because 

 his universe has Mind behind it and a goal in front, and, in 

 between, tlie presence of a Divine Love that is interested in all 

 its creatures. 



Metaphysics, in short, lies behind Evolution as a theory of 

 origins — whether the scientific sceptic likes it ' or not. And it 

 cannot therefore be met without Metaphysics, — whether the 

 apologist likes it or not. Again, Metaphysics — or Philosophy — 

 cannot possibly be only negative and defensive. All its denials 

 are also atiirmations, and athrmations that involve us in further 

 affirmations indefinitely. 



This is one side of what I have to say respecting the pre- 

 requisites of a Christian Philosophy. Taken alone, it would be 

 disheartening and also misleading. But it is not to be taken 

 alone ; and I hope, when we have brieHy reviewed the ground 

 we have readied, to conclude with a few words on the com- 

 plementary truth. 



Heraclitus and Parmenides stood for the two opposite side.s 

 of a truth which Plato and subsequent philosophers have 

 endeavoured to discover in its completeness. The one said 

 " All is flux " ; the other, " All is one eternal and stable Reality." 

 We have so far followed, as it were, the Heraclitean path. The 

 old familiar saying, " Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in 

 illis," here claims our attention, and claims it particularly in 

 the second clause, which we must not, as so often, pass lightly 

 over. We change in and with the times. We might try our 

 best to be conservative — and there is a right way of so doing — 

 but a mere resistance to new ideas because they cannot at once 

 be fitted into old formulas — this means intellectual, and per- 

 haps even spiritual, torpor. And in the long run the human 

 mind does and will move — conservatives and progressives alike. 

 In other words — to repeat what I have said more than once 

 before — Philosophy enters at the back-door. Our modes of 

 thinking change while we think : old ideas, once welded into 

 the continuity of our thought, are left high and dry : a new 

 sensitiveness to aspects of truth once unimpressive, develops 

 unsuspected within us. If reflexion is but half -awakened, it 



