186 REV. JOHN TUCKWELL_, M.E.A.S., ON MODEEN THEORIES 



truths recorded are more dimly perceived and described than 

 upon its later, while the general moral and spiritual level of the 

 subjects of their influence is considerably lower. Moreover even 

 at the middle period of the history some of the characters most 

 approved and most exemplary in their devoutness shock our 

 moral sensibility by the enormity of their words and deeds. 

 To account then for the upward movement of truth and life 

 which appeared to take place, the theory of evolution is intro- 

 duced into these spiritual spheres. 



It is not always easy to discover whether the term 

 is intended merely to indicate an amplification of truth 

 and life analogous to the evolution of the individual from 

 the germ ; or whether it is used in the far more difficult 

 sense of the origination of a higher species from a lower. 

 Probably some attach one idea to it and others the other. 

 But in wdiichever sense employed it is beyond doubt 

 intended to displace the idea of a divine inspiration communi- 

 cated to the writer ctb extra, or from a source not himself, and 

 then operating wdthin him through his mental and moral 

 faculties. Nor do those writers who resort to the theory always 

 make it plain whether the process is supposed to apply to the 

 events recorded or to the record of the events, or to the truths 

 intended to be conveyed by the record, or even to Him to whom 

 legislators and historians, poets and prophets, apostles and evan- 

 gelists, all alike bear witness. But to whichever applied, it 

 seems in every case to be equally inappropriate. Broadly and 

 generally, the term evolution indicates that the living power 

 which produces new forms is within, and operates wdthin the 

 original, under the favourable conditions of a suitable environ- 

 ment. Manifestly, therefore, to use it to indicate that one set 

 of events followed another, as shall w^e say, that the forty 

 years of wandering in the wilderness came by a process of 

 evolution from the false report of the spies, is to use it without 

 any due appreciation of the proper function of words. May it 

 then be applied to the record ? This surely would land us in 

 absurdities equivalent to that of saying that Macaulay's History 

 of England was followed by that of Froude by a process of 

 evolution. Or if it be applied to the trntlis intended to be 

 taught, the term is no less scientifically inadmissible, since the 

 truths themselves at the end of the period covered by the record 

 were neither more nor less than at the beginning. They had 

 not altered. The alteration and progress was in human know- 

 ledge and experience, and by no conceivable application of the 

 term can the advance of human knowdedge and experience be 



