i88o.] 
A Change of Front. 
559 
III. A CHANGE OF FRONT.* 
By J. W. Slater. 
; HOSE authors and orators who consider it their duty 
to criticise the spirit and the results of modern 
Science —especially of Biology,— from a religious 
noint of view, have of late somewhat altered their position. 
Physical research is no longer declared necessarily, or even 
generally, atheistic in its tendencies. Ihe past duration of 
the earth is no longer limited to the old 4004 yeais befoie 
the vulgar Christian era creation is now regarded as a 
continuous process, not as an engineering operation com- 
pleted at a certain date according to contiadt. 1 he cosmo- 
gony of Kant and Laplace— the so-called nebular hypothesis 
—is accepted as perfeftly compatible with theism, and even 
with the tenets of revealed religion. The independent ongin 
of every animal and every plant is not now insisted upon 
and even the high antiquity of the human lace is treated as 
an open question. This is much ; and if we look backwaids 
for a P few moments, and read the sermons, the speeches, and 
the review-articles which a quarter of a century ago weie 
discharged at modern research, we must feel duly thankful 
for the progress that has been effected. But we should 
beware of supposing that all the fundamental dodtnnes of 
the New Natural History are fully and finally accepteo by 
“ parsons, poets, novelists, lawyers,” and generally speaking 
by outsiders of culture and intelligence. There ascertain 
reservations, unpleasantly like the “ s avmg clauses in a 
Aft of Parliament, which greatly qualify, if they do not 
altogether annul, the meaning of the c °"^ s *' 0 , n * h a ^e® 
mentioned. Nay, it becomes sometimes doubtful whether 
these admissions are anything more than a change of 
front, — a “ flank attack” substituted for the more direft 
opposition which Evolutionism has had, H 11 recently 
encounter. In the works which, as types of then class, 1 
have seleaed for the basis of my present considerations, 
* The Spirit of Nature being a Series of 
C S“ d B» .b. K»> >b" ” 
“ Nineteenth Century.” 
VOL. II. (THIRD SERIES). 2 ^ 
