that science was about to destroy the belief in God. But time has proved
that they had merely misinterpreted the meaning of evolution. Further
understanding has shown that, instead of destroying the belief in God,
evolution has given us a new and better understanding of the whole
matter and has placed the hope of immortality on firmer ground than it
previously occupied.

Evolution is an established and generally accepted fact. No educated
person now thinks of questioning it. It is settled beyond dispute that
all things in the physical world have become what they are through a
long, slow, gradual evolution and that organisms the most perfect in
form and most complex in function have evolved from simpler ones. The
age of miracle has passed and belief in miracle has passed so far as its
relation to the material world is concerned. It is no longer necessary
to have a belief in an anthropomorphic God, performing feats in defiance
of natural law, in order to account for that which exists. Science has
reduced the cosmos to comprehension and shown that, given nebulous
physical matter, we can understand how the earth came into existence.

But why should we stop with the application of the laws of evolution to
material things? Only the outright materialist, who asserts that life is
a product of matter, can logically do so, and so great an authority in
the scientific world as Sir Oliver Lodge has asserted that there is no
longer any such thing as scientific materialism.[B] Those who accept the
idea of the existence of the soul at all must necessarily accept the
idea of the evolution of the soul. How can consciousness possibly
escape the laws that evolve the media for the expression of
consciousness? There must be the evolution of mind as certainly as there
is evolution of matter. The material and the spiritual, form and life,
are inseparable. Indeed, scientific progress has now brought us to the
point where matter, as such, practically disappears and we are face to
face with the fact that matter is really but a manifestation of force.
How, then, is it longer possible to speak of the soul and not accept the
evolution of the soul? Psychology is no less a science than physiology.
The phenomena of consciousness are as definitely studied as physical
phenomena, and it is no more difficult to account for a myriad souls
than to account for a million suns and their planets. The scientists who
have taken the position that the universe has