This application of the abstract doctrine of Evolution gives it an enormous and startling expansion:  so enormous and so startling that the doctrine itself seems absolutely new.  To say that the present grows by regular law out of the past is one thing; to say that it has grown out of a distant past in which as yet the present forms of life upon the earth, the present vegetation, the seas and islands and continents, the very planet itself, the sun and moon, were not yet made—­and all this also by regular law—­that is quite another thing.  And the bearings of this new application of Science deserve study.

Now it seems quite plain that this doctrine of Evolution is in no sense whatever antagonistic to the teachings of Religion, though it may be, and that we shall have to consider afterwards, to the teachings of revelation.  Why then should religious men independently of its relation to revelation shrink from it, as very many unquestionably do?  The reason is that, whilst this doctrine leaves the truth of the existence and supremacy of God exactly where it was, it cuts away, or appears to cut away, some of the main arguments for that truth.

Now, in regard to the arguments whereby we have been accustomed to prove or to corroborate the existence of a Supreme Being, it is plain that, to take these arguments away or to make it impossible to use them, is not to disprove or take away the truth itself.  We find every day instances of men resting their faith in a truth on some grounds which we know to be untenable, and we see what a terrible trial it sometimes is when they find out that this is so, and know not as yet on what other ground they are to take their stand.  And some men succumb in the trial and lose their faith together with the argument which has hitherto supported it.  But the truth still stands in spite of the failure of some to keep their belief in it, and in spite of the impossibility of supporting it by the old arguments.

And when men have become accustomed to rest their belief on new grounds the loss of the old arguments is never found to be a very serious matter.  Belief in revelation has been shaken again and again by this very increase of knowledge.  It was unquestionably a dreadful blow to many in the days of Galileo to find that the language of the Bible in regard to the movement of the earth and sun was not scientifically correct.  It was a dreadful blow to many in the days of the Reformation to find that they had been misled by what they believed to be an infallible Church.

Such shocks to faith try the mettle of men’s moral and spiritual conviction, and they often refuse altogether to hold what they can no longer establish by the arguments which have hitherto been to them the decisive, perhaps the sole decisive, proofs.

And yet in spite of these shocks belief in revelation is strong still in men’s souls, and is clearly not yet going to quit the world.

But let us go on to consider how far it is true that the arguments which have hitherto been regarded as proving the existence of a Supreme Creator are really affected very gravely by this doctrine of Evolution.