Evolution will help Theology.

My task is near its close. I have briefly sketched the doctrine of Evolution, have shown you that it does not degrade man, that it page 18 is not opposed to Theism or simple belief in a God, that it is not anti Scriptural, that it is in harmony with the fundamentals of Christianity. In closing I will indicate a range of topics in the investigation of which the doctrine of Evolution may be applied for the relief and benefit of theology.

One of the darkest problems of nature, on any scheme of theology, is the prevalence of pain and death amongst the lower creatures. For incalculable ages past there has not been a moment in which the atmosphere of this planet has not vibrated to the death cry of sonic creature of God's in the clutch of its destroyer. From the dawn of life upon its surface till now, the earth has been a vast slaughter-house. Theology has been able to give no satisfactory explanation of these facts. Paley, who has treated them at some length, has nothing better to say than this; that it is an advantage to an animal to be devoured in its prime, as it saves it from the misery of dying of disease or old age. We feel that this explantation leaves the difficulty just where it was, and that still one of the hardest demands upon our faith is—

To trust that God is love indeed,
And love Creation's final law,
While Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieks against our creed.

You have seen probably—and have wondered to see—a cat torturing a mouse. In one instance, which recently came within my own knowledge, a cat protracted for four hours the luxury of torturing a captured rat, before giving the death-stroke In view of these and similar tragedies of brute-life we do not wonder at the question of the half-mad poet and painter Blake—a man mad by excess rather than deficiency of wit—in his "Apostrophe to the Tiger,"—

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
Through the forests of the night!
What immortal hand or eye
Framed thy fearful symmetry?
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

A most pertinent question! the type of a thousand which will spring in the heart of a man who has eyes to see what is going on in the world of creatures below him. The only ray of light which, so far as I know, has ever been thrown on this dark subject comes from the Evolutionary doctrine of Natural Selection. That doctrine shows us how, by making the conditions of life page 19 hard—by exposing all creatures to scarcity of food, and attacks from enemies, the Creator brings about the elimination of the weaker forms, and how—further—by the constant selection of the stronger forms, and by the accumulation of advantageous variations, there has been an upward progress of organisms, from the zoophyte to man. This doctrine does not remove all the difficulty, it does not show us why the Creator has chosen this means to his end, but at least it shows us that He has an end and what that end is; and so we are helped to believe "that nothing walks with aimless feet;"—

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth, with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Similar considerations will help us to understand the liability to accident and disease which is laid upon us all. This happens under the general law which is meant to secure the suppression of weaker and maintenance of stronger forms. The tendency of theology has been to refer the incidence of this law in each particular case to a special Divine intention, to assume that the burning of the "Cospatrick," for instance, was due to a Divine volition, or when a careless nurse lets fall a child, and the fall results in hip-disease and life-long misery—as I saw in the case of a young woman the other day—that that accident, again, was due to a Divine volition. We have all felt the strain which is put upon our faith in the Divine wisdom and benevolence by these representations. It is better to sac in such cases the examples of a general law under which the conditions of life are made hard—first, in the interest of the physical type itself, and next, for " the irritation and development of the human intellect"—as De Qaincey puts it—in avoiding the causes of these ills and devising the remedies for them. I do not insist here upon the moral ends in view. Christianity can turn even these physical evils to account in carrying on a spiritual discipline, and in true harmony with Evolution insists, "that life is not as idle ore,"—

But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom
To shape and use.

And when Evolution reminds man of his lowly origin, of his affinity with the creatures beneath him, of his liability, under the page 20 sway of passion and lust, to revert to the animal types from which he has emerged, she is again the helper of Christianity in the field of Practical Ethics. The voices of both unite in the admonition which closes the stanzas from "In Memoriam" already partly quoted:—

Arise and fly
The reeling Fawn, the sensual feast,
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die!