triking passage:--

And how utterly all the common objections to Divine
revelation vanish away when they are set in the light of
this theory of a spiritual progression. Are we reminded that
there prevailed, in those earlier days, views of the nature
of God and man, of human life and Divine Providence, which
we now find to be untenable? _That_, we answer, is precisely
what the theory of development presupposes. If early views
of religion and morality had not been imperfect, where had
been the development? If symbolical visions and mythical
creations had found no place in the early Oriental
expression of Divine truth, where had been the development?
The sufficient answer to ninety-nine out of a hundred of the
ordinary objections to the Bible, as the record of a divine
education of our race, is asked in that one
word--development. And to what are we indebted for that
potent word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at
the same moment so completely transformed our knowledge and
dispelled our difficulties? To modern science, resolutely
pursuing its search for truth in spite of popular obloquy
and--alas! that one should have to say it--in spite too
often of theological denunciation (p. 53).

Apart from its general importance, I read this remarkable statement
with the more pleasure, since, however imperfectly I may have
endeavoured to illustrate the evolution of theology in a paper
published in the _Nineteenth Century_ last year,[29] it seems to me
that in principle, at any rate, I may hereafter claim high theological
sanction for the views there set forth.

If theologians are henceforward prepared to recognise the authority of
secular science in the manner and to the extent indicated in the
Manchester trilogy; if the distinguished prelates who offer these
terms are really plenipotentiaries, then, so far as I may presume to
speak on such a matter, there will be no difficulty about concluding a
perpetual treaty of peace, and indeed of alliance, between the high
contracting powers, whose history has hitherto been little more than a
record of continual warfare. But if the great Chancellor's maxim, "Do
ut des," is to form the basis of negotiation, I am afraid that
secular science will be ruined; for it seems to me that theology,
under the generous impulse of a sudden conversion, has given all that
she hath; and inde