e had earnestly
wished, in the interest of science as well as of religion, that a
theologian who writes a work which claims to be scientific and to advocate
the Christian standpoint, had abstained from that coarse and disgusting
contempt and derision of adversaries which we meet so often in his book,
and which only causes friend and foe to take a position contrary to that
which the author intended. Truempelmann who, in an essay upon Darwinism,
monistic philosophy, and Christianity (Jahrbuecher fuer protestantische
Theologie, 1876, I) gives a similar conception of the relation between
Darwinism and religion, but defends his whole position with much more
scientific acuteness and depth, has also not taken the tone which worthily
treats an opposite opinion and its advocates.

* * * * * {210}

CHAPTER II.

REFORM OF RELIGION, OR AT LEAST OF THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION, THROUGH
DARWINISM.

Sec. 1. _Heinrich Lang, Friedrich Vischer, Gustav Jaeger._

In passing on to those who in Darwinism do not see a negation but a
reformation of religion, or at least of theology, we first meet Heinrich
Lang, the late spiritual leader of the "Reformtheologie" in Switzerland. He
treats of "Die Religion im Zeitalter Darwins" ("Religion in the Age of
Darwin") in Holtzendorff's and Oncken's "Deutsche Zeit- und Streitfragen,"
Jahrg. II, Heft 31, Berlin, Luederitz, 1873.

With a very correct estimate of the lasting value of religion as well as of
natural science, and with a warm apology for the religious realm, he
regulates the boundaries of each by asking religion not to hinder modern
knowledge of the world and nature, and by asking knowledge of nature to
leave the realm of religion untouched in its self-certainty.

But when he, evidently still dependent on the old rationalistic
supernaturalistic conception of miracle and providence, claims to find that
as the result of modern knowledge of the world and nature a special
providence is no longer conceivable, and no other hearing of prayer is
possible than a subjective psychological one; that the processes in the
world, in their entire final causal connection of causes and effects,
nowhere leave a place for {211} the freely acting hand of a divine Lord of
the world, and that even a moral order of the world can only prove itself
so far as guilt and punishment stand in a natural causal connection with
one another: then his religiousness makes concessions to the moder