this sort,
there is an irreconcilable conflict. But it is because neither of them
is a fair, rational, or true form of thought.

When the principle of Evolution is properly comprehended and expounded;
when Christianity is interpreted in the light that history and
philosophy require,--the two will be found to have no difficulty in
joining hands.

Though a purely naturalistic Evolutionism may ignore God; and a purely
supernatural religion may leave no room for Evolution, a natural
religion and a rational Evolutionism may yet harmoniously unite in a
higher and more fruitful marriage.

Let us only recognize _Evolution by the divine spirit, as the process of
God's working in the world_, and we have then a theory which has a place
and a function, at once for all that the newest science has to teach and
the most venerable faith needs to retain.

In the first place, Evolution is not itself a cause. It is no force in
itself. It has no originating power. It is simply a method and law of
the occurrence of things. Evolution shows that all things proceed,
little by little, without breach of continuity; that the higher ever
proceeds from the lower; the more complex ever unfolds from the more
simple. For every species or form, it points out some ancestor or
natural antecedent, from which by gradual modification, it has been
derived. And in natural selection, the influence of the environment,
sexual selection, use and disuse, sterility, and the variability of the
organism, Science shows us some of the secondary factors or conditions
of this development. But none of these are supposed by it to be first
causes or originating powers. What these are, science itself does not
claim the right as yet to declare.

Now, it is true that this unbroken course of development, this
omnipresent reign of law, is inconsistent with the theological theories
of supernatural intervention that have so often claimed a monopoly of
faith. But independent of all scientific reasons, on religious and
philosophical grounds themselves, this dogmatic view is no longer to be
accepted. For if God be the God of all-seeing wisdom and foresight that
reverence conceives him to be, his work should be too perfect from the
outset to demand such changes of plan and order of working. The great
miracle of miracles, as Isaac Taylor used to say, is that Providence
needs no miracles to carry out its all-perfect plans.

But if, I hear it asked, the huge machine of the univer