This is virtually admitted by Rationalists themselves. For their method in dealing with Christ is almost invariably to belittle him. They try in every way to reduce his spiritual stature. They question his intellectual superiority; they deny his sinlessness, and feel quite sure that the real Christ was much less than our present ideal Christ. They regard him as "the great Jewish Teacher" as "the interpretive spirit and genius of the moral world"-whatever that may mean―or "something after that sort." They patronize him, and say pretty things about him, but really have no faith in him as the Messiah, as the sinless Son of God and revelation of the absolute religion.

Rationalists, whatever their pretentions, are sure in the end to deny Christ. They may begin by merely questioning the physical miracles, but soon or late they come inevitably to the rejection of Christ as the Sent of God and Saviour of the world. This, because their theory demands it. They must belittle him in order to make him fit into their theory. Leave him as presented in the New Testament, and he is entirely too large for their use, too large to be the product of his age. But cut him down, reduce him to the size of an ordinary man with more, perhaps, than an ordinary amount of religious genius, and they can evolve him from his age and make him fit into their theory.

At this point, therefore, Rationalism testifies against itself. It virtually confesses that it cannot manage Christ without belittling him. Hence, at this point, Rationalism again breaks down. Its theory of a continuous, natural development cannot account for Christ. For nothing is more certain than that Christ cannot be belittled. He has, in the world's history, a greatness and grandeur of his own. The great minds of all Christendom have and do bow to him as something unique and transcendent. "It is quite certain," says Lecky, "that the Christian type differs not only in degree but in kind from the Pagan one." Admit that, and the theory of Rationalism falls to the ground. If Christ differed, not only in degree but 2 History of Rationalism Vol. I. P. 314.

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in kind, from the men of his day, then he was no product of his age. Here, then again, Rationalism breaks down and the supernatural gets a sure footing in human history. Christ was not a natural development nor a supernatural revision of history, but he was a supernatural enrichment of history. He came not out of anything then in the world, neither did he come to change the world's order, but he came to enrich, carry forward and perfect that order. The Mississippi rolls on from the mountains to the sea, but the Missouri comes in to enrich its waters and swell its volume. So the great river of human history rolls on from the beginning to the close, but Christianity comes in to enrich its waters and deepen and broaden its current.

Christ, therefore, is a moral miracle, and his physical miracles are but the outward sign of his moral grandeur and spiritual power. They are the signs of the inflowing of the new light and the new power. They are never to be considered alone but in their relation to the new creation. They are parts of this creation, the external symbols of the coming of the new creative force. In order that this new light and power might get started in the world and do its work, it must get a lodg ment in human consciousness; it must become a conviction in the souls of men; they must believe and feel it to be of God. The physical miracles were the helps Christ called in to aid him in this work of rendering men conscious of the new life and new power. They worked with the Spirit in producing conviction. They appealed to the senses as the Spirit appealed to the heart, and, by the union of the two, the new conviction, the new consciousness was created, the seeds of the kingdom were planted. But when these seeds were planted, when the new consciousness was created, and the new power had obtained a sure footing in the world, these outward signs were no longer needed, so they ceased, and the work was carried forward by the great moral miracle of Christ, by the new light and the new power incorporated or infused into the life of the world.

Christianity, therefore, is distinctively a supernatural relig ion. There may be supernatural elements in other religions,

but Christianity from beginning to end is supernatural. That which distinguishes ours from all other religions and makes it Christian, viz., Jesus Christ, is not the product of natural development, but of supernatural enrichment of human history. God gave him as a revelation of His own thought, spirit and He reveals to us God, duty and destiny, and so becomes the interpreter of all that has been and all that will be. As the type of perfected humanity, Christ is the interpreter of all science and all history. "In his light we see light."

purpose.

Taking him as our guide we can look back through the world and see what God has been doing through all the ages. First came the mineral forces which were allowed to work for untold ages and prepare the earth for the vital. Then came the vital, and the world of living things appeared. When the vital forces were sufficiently developed, God sent the spiritual, and the human world appeared. When this world was sufficiently developed, God began to enrich it by special inflows of His spirit and revelations of His will. He took a people and trained them to be the world's spiritual educators. In due time he sent Christ as a manifestation of His glory and the creator of His life, the Divine life in the world. Since his advent, Christ has been the great moral power of the world, and is greater to-day than ever before.

Looking forward with Christ as our guide, we may see what is to be. Christ reveals to us the destiny of mankind. He is the goal of humanity. We are to be like him. More and more is the world to be filled with his spirit and realize his life until all souls become like him and God becomes "all in all." This grand consummation is that to which this doctrine of a progressive creation by stages, both of the earth and of man, and the consequent plastic and growing character of nature, points.

But whether this conclusion is accepted or not, it is certain that the doctrine itself is more consonant with the present state of our knowledge than any other. It conserves all that is true in Orthodoxy and all that is true in Rationalism, and unites them into a higher and better system of thought, a system in

which the supernatural has a sure footing, and the orderly, progressive, Divine activity, are equally sure.

Stephen Crane.

ARTICLE XXX.

Evolution and Religion.

THE truth of the theory of evolution as formulated by Darwin, Wallace and Herbert Spencer seems, in the main, to be pretty well established, that from the beginning the homogeneous has become the hetrogeneous, the simple the complex, that the higher forms of life, vegetable and animal, have arisen from lower, that there has been a similar development in mentality, that these changes have been steadily progressive, according to certain laws and by means of immanent forces, though no less an authority than Dr. Dawson declares that the evolutionist philosophy is "the boldest of all that have sprung up in our world," that it is "destitute of any shadow of proof, that it is supported only by vague analogies and figures of speech, and by the arbitrary and artificial coherence of its own parts." 1

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We do not, however, agree with Prof. LeConte that evolution is “axiomatic," "more certain than gravitation," that its law is" thoroughly established." But the evidence in its favor is so strong that we may regard it as the best answer yet given to the question, How came this world to be what it is? While we accept the doctrine of evolution as essentially true, we do not hold ourselves bound to assent to what we regard its conjectures, speculations and vagaries.

Religion, as generally understood, is a recognition of Deity, of our moral accountability to Him and our worship of Him as all powerful, wise and good. Religion is a product of both

1 Story of the Earth and Man. pp. 151, 152.

2 Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought. pp. 65, 66.

the head and heart, an idea and a feeling, an intellection and a sentiment.

It is the aim of this paper to show that there is no antagonism between religion and evolution, that the latter need not disturb our belief in God nor our worship of Him, that it does not unsettle the essential doctrines of Christian theology-to show this chiefly from the confessions of Evolutionists themselves.

I. Evolution does not discredit the notion of an original Creator. None of its prominent advocates, with the exception of a few Germans, claim that it does. Mr. Darwin was reticent about his own belief in Deity, but he was sure that his theory was not hostile to religion. "I see no good reason," he says, "why the views given in this volume 3 should shock the religious feelings of any one." He quotes approvingly from another: "It is just as noble a conception of Deity that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws." The schoolmen of the middle ages anticipated this idea. They said, "All things belong to the Providence of God, but all things are not created immediately by God. He created the first directly and these created others."

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While Mr. Darwin would not affirm that every slight variation of structure, the union of each pair in marriage, the dissemination of each seed and the like are the result of a divine purpose, he could not believe that the origin of species and individuals were the result of blind chance.

Mr. Spencer, while insisting that the Power behind phenomena is utterly inscrutable, still holds that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness, that we cannot rid ourselves of the idea of an actuality lying back of appearances." 5 "The existence of God," says LeConte," like our own existence, is more certain than any scientific theory, than anything can possibly be made by proof." "The infinite and eternal 8 Origin of Species. p. 421. 4 Origin of Species. p. 42. 5 First Principles. 6 Evolution and Religious Thought. p. 45.

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