and then solidity and
movement. We had a glimpse of organic _history_; and Christian thought
became more living and more assured as it met the larger view of life.

However unsatisfactory the new attitude might be to our critics, to
Christians the reform was positive. What was discarded was a
limitation, a negation. The movement was essentially conservative,
even actually reconstructive. For the language disused was a language
inconsistent with the definitions of orthodoxy; it set bounds to the
infinite, and by implication withdrew from the creative rule all such
processes as could be brought within the descriptions of research. It
ascribed fixity and finality to that "creature" in which an apostle
taught us to recognise the birth-struggles of an unexhausted progress.
It tended to banish mystery from the world we see, and to confine it
to a remote first age.

In the reformed, the restored, language of religion, Creation became
again not a link in a rational series to complete a circle of the
sciences, but the mysterious and permanent relation between the
infinite and the finite, between the moving changes we know in part,
and the Power, after the fashion of that observation, unknown, which
is itself "unmoved all motion's source."[236]

With regard to man it is hardly necessary, even were it possible, to
illustrate the application of this bolder faith. When the record of
his high extraction fell under dispute, we were driven to a
contemplation of the whole of his life, rather than of a part and that
part out of sight. We remembered again, out of Aristotle, that the
result of a process interprets its beginnings. We were obliged to read
the title of such dignity as we may claim, in results and still more
in aspirations.

Some men still measure the value of great present facts in
life--reason and virtue and sacrifice--by what a self-disparaged
reason can collect of the meaner rudiments of these noble gifts. Mr.
Balfour has admirably displayed the discrepancy, in this view, between
the alleged origin and the alleged authority of reason. Such an
argument ought to be used not to discredit the confident reason, but
to illuminate and dignify its dark beginnings, and to show that at
every step in the long course of growth a Power was at work which is
not included in any term or in all the terms of the series.

I submit that the more men know of actual Christian teaching, its
fidelity to the past, and its sincerity in face of discovery, the more
certainly they will judge that the stimulus of the doctrine of
evolution has produced in the long run vigour as well as flexibility
in the doctrine of Creation and of man.

I pass from Evolution in general to Natural Selection.

The character in religious language which I have for short called
mechanical was not absent in the argument from design as stated before
Darwin. It seemed to have reference to a world conceived as fixed. It
pointed, not to the plastic capacity and energy of living matter, but
to the fixed adaptation of this and that organ to an unchanging place
or function.

Mr. Hobhouse has given us the valuable phrase "a niche of organic
opportunity." Such a phrase would have borne a different sense in
non-evolutionary thought. In that thought, the opportunity was an
opportunity for the Creative Power, and Design appeared in the
preparation of the organism to fit the niche. The idea of the niche
and its occupant growing together from simpler to more complex mutual
adjustment was unwelcome to this teleology. If the adaptation was
traced to the influence, through competition, of the environment, the
old teleology lost an illustration and a proof. For the cogency of the
proof in every instance depended upon the absence of explanation.
Where the process of adaptation was discerned, the evidence of Purpose
or Design was weak. It was strong only when the natural antecedents
were not discovered, strongest when they could be declared
undiscoverable.

Paley's favourite word is "Contrivance"; and for him contrivance is
most certain where production is most obscure. He points out the
physiological advantage of the _valvulae conniventes_ to man, and the
advantage for teleology of the fact that they cannot have been formed
by "action and pressure." What is not due to pressure may be
attributed to design, and when a "mechanical" process more subtle than
pressure was suggested, the case for design was so far weakened. The
cumulative proof from the multitude of instances began to disappear
when, in selection, a natural sequence was suggested in which all the
adaptations might be reached by the motive power of life, and
especially when, as in Darwin's teaching, there was full recognition
of the reactions of life to the stimulus of circumstance. "The
organism fits the niche," said the teleologist, "because the Creator
formed it so as to fit." "The organism fits the niche," said the
naturalist, "because unless it fitted it could not exist." "It was
fitted to survive," said the theologian. "It survives because it
fits," said the selectionist. The two forms of statement are not
incompatible; but the new statement, by provision of an ideally
universal explanation of process, was hostile to a doctrine of purpose
which relied upon evidences always exceptional however numerous.
Science persistently presses on to find the universal machinery of
adaptation in this planet; and whether this be found in selection, or
in direct-effect, or in vital reactions resulting in large changes, or
in a combination of these and other factors, it must always be opposed
to the conception of a Divine Power here and there but not everywhere
active.

For science, the Divine must be constant, operative everywhere and in
every quality and power, in environment and in organism, in stimulus
and in reaction, in variation and in struggle, in hereditary
equilibrium, and in "the unstable state of species"; equally present
on both sides of every strain, in all pressures and in all
resistances, in short in the general wonder of life and the world. And
this is exactly what the Divine Power must be for religious faith.

The point I wish once more to make is that the necessary readjustment
of teleology, so as to make it depend upon the contemplation of the
whole instead of a part, is advantageous quite as much to theology as
to science. For the older view failed in courage. Here again our
theism was not sufficiently theistic.

Where results seemed inevitable, it dared not claim them as God-given.
In the argument from Design it spoke not of God in the sense of
theology, but of a Contriver, immensely, not infinitely wise and good,
working within a world, the scene, rather than the ever dependent
outcome, of His Wisdom; working in such emergencies and opportunities
as occurred, by forces not altogether within His control, towards an
end beyond Himself. It gave us, instead of the awful reverence due to
the Cause of all substance and form, all love and wisdom, a
dangerously detached appreciation of an ingenuity and benevolence
meritorious in aim and often surprisingly successful in contrivance.

The old teleology was more useful to science than to religion, and
the design-naturalists ought to be gratefully remembered by
Biologists. Their search for evidences led them to an eager study of
adaptations and of minute forms, a study such as we have now an
incentive to in the theory of Natural Selection. One hardly meets with
the same ardour in microscopical research until we come to modern
workers. But the argument from Design was never of great importance to
faith. Still, to rid it of this character was worth all the stress and
anxiety of the gallant old war. If Darwin had done nothing else for
us, we are to-day deeply in his debt for this. The world is not less
venerable to us now, not less eloquent of the causing mind, rather
much more eloquent and sacred. But our wonder is not that "the
underjaw of the swine works under the ground" or in any or all of
those particular adaptations which Paley collected with so much skill,
but that a purpose transcending, though resembling, our own purposes,
is everywhere manifest; that what we live in is a whole, mutually
sustaining, eventful and beautiful, where the "dead" forces feed the
energies of life, and life sustains a stranger existence, able in some
real measure to contemplate the whole, of which, mechanically
considered, it is a minor product and a rare ingredient. Here, again,
the change was altogether positive. It was not the escape of a vessel
in a storm with loss of spars and rigging, not a shortening of sail to
save the masts and make a port of refuge. It was rather the emergence
from narrow channels to an open sea. We had propelled the great ship,
finding purchase here and there for slow and uncertain movement. Now,
in deep water, we spread large canvas to a favouring breeze.

The scattered traces of design might be forgotten or obliterated. But
the broad impression of Order became plainer when seen at due distance
and in sufficient range of effect, and the evidence of love and wisdom
in the universe could be trusted more securely for the loss of the
particular calculation of their machinery.

Many other topics of faith are affected by modern biology. In some of
these we have learnt at present only a wise caution, a wise
uncertainty. We stand before the newly unfolded spectacle of
suffering, silenced; with faith not scientifically reassured but still
holding fast certain other clues of conviction. In many important
topics we are at a loss. But in others, and among them those I have
mentioned, we have passed beyond this negative state and find faith
positively strengthened and more fully expressed.

We have gained also a language and a habit of thought more fit for the
great and dark problems that remain, less liable to damaging
conflicts, equipped for more rapid assimilation of knowledge. And by
this change biology itself is a gainer. For, relieved of fruitless
encounters with popular religion, it may advance with surer aim along
the path of really scientific life-study which was reopened for modern
men by the publication of _The Origin of Species_.

Charles Darwin regretted that, in following science, he had not done
"more direct good"[237] to his fellow-creatures. He has, in fact,
rendered substantial service to interests bound up with the daily
conduct and hopes of common men; for his work has led to improvements
in the preaching of the Christian faith.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 218: F. R. Tennant: "The Being of God in the light of
Physical Science," in _Essays on some theological questions of the
day_. London, 1905.]

[Footnote 219: _Evolutionisme et Platonisme_, pp. 45, 46, 47. Paris,
1908.]

[Footnote 220: _Essays of Elia_, "New Year's Eve," p. 41; Ainger's
edition. London, 1899.]

[Footnote 221: Such an example is given in Baron F. von Hügel's
recently finished book, the result of thirty years' research: _The
Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa
and her Friends_. London, 1908.]

[Footnote 222: G. Tyrrell, in _Mediaevalism_, has a chapter which is
full of the important _moral_ element in a scientific attitude. "The
only infallible guardian of truth is the spirit of truthfulness."
_Mediaevalism_, p. 182, London, 1908.]

[Footnote 223: _Queen of the Air_, Preface, p. vii. London, 1906.]

[Footnote 224: The scientific rank of its writer justifies the
insertion of the following letter from the late Sir John
Burdon-Sanderson to me. In the lecture referred to I had described the
methods of Professor Moseley in teaching Biology as affording a
suggestion of the scientific treatment of religion.

OXFORD,

_April 30, 1902_.

DEAR SIR:

I feel that I must express to you my thanks for the
discourse which I had the pleasure of listening to yesterday
afternoon.

I do not mean to say that I was able to follow all that you
said as to the identity of Method in the two fields of
Science and Religion, but I recognise that the "mysticism"
of which you spoke gives us the only way by which the two
fields can be brought into relation.

Among much that was memorable, nothing interested me more
than what you said of Moseley.

No one, I am sure, knew better than you the value of his
teaching and in what that value consisted.

Yours faithfully,

J. BURDON-SANDERSON.

]

[Footnote 225: H. P. Liddon, _The Recovery of S. Thomas_; a sermon
preached in St. Paul's, London, on April 23rd, 1882 (the Sunday after
Darwin's death).]

[Footnote 226: Dr. Pusey (_Unscience not Science adverse to Faith_,
1878) writes: "The questions as to 'species,' of what variations the
animal world is capable, whether the species be more or fewer,