lopment arrived at the use of reason and the dominion over nature;
not a perfect man, made in the image of God, but a cousin to the
tail-less apes, newly accustomed to walking on two feet, is the ancestor
of our race. Without a fall of man there is no possibility nor even a
necessity of _redemption;_ our entire Christian theology would be
dealing with shadowy abstractions, unreasonable fears and hopes, and
purposeless strivings. The belief of the Christian is to the
evolutionist of some value as a phenomenon in the history of the mind,
but not the slightest intrinsic value is recognized in any of the
doctrines of Christian faith, not even in the belief in a _personal
God_. God is, according to Spencer, _the Unknowable_. Naturally, there
can not be _miracles,_ since all processes in nature are conceived as
governed by laws not directed by a Divine Intelligence but by forces
resident in nature. Hence, too, there can be no inspired _revelation_ of
God, since that would presume not only the existence of a personal God
but an intervention in natural processes of thought (miracle). John
Fiske wrote: The hypothesis of inspiration "conveys most certainly a
conception of Divine action as local, special, and transitory; and in
so far as it does this, it bears the marks of that heathen mode of
philosophy which was current when Christian monotheism arose."
(_"Darwinism and Other Essays,"_ 1895.) Evolution says: If there is a
God we have no means of knowing Him; and what we know of nature
certainly precludes the idea that God, if He exists, will concern
Himself about man or break down the laws of nature even for an instant
in his behalf. The conclusion is, that there is no inspired Bible. Nor
indeed an absolute religion. All religious truths are considered
relative, with no such distinction as true religion and false religion,
since there is no criterion revealed (according to the theory) by
which we can test a religion whether it be true or false. Finally,
there is no absolute _standard of morals_. Moral truths, like the
religious, are relative only. In other words, the teaching that "Christ
has atoned for sin," is as little to be accepted as an absolute truth,
as the command: "Thou shalt not steal" must be accepted as embodying an
absolute rule of conduct. Clodd says in _"The Story of Creation"_: "Man
by himself is not only unprogressive, he is also not so much immoral as
unmoral. For where there is no society there is no sin! There