nt old war. If Darwin had done nothing else for
us, we are to-day deeply in his debt for this. The world is not less
venerable to us now, not less eloquent of the causing mind, rather
much more eloquent and sacred. But our wonder is not that "the
underjaw of the swine works under the ground" or in any or all of
those particular adaptations which Paley collected with so much skill,
but that a purpose transcending, though resembling, our own purposes,
is everywhere manifest; that what we live in is a whole, mutually
sustaining, eventful and beautiful, where the "dead" forces feed the
energies of life, and life sustains a stranger existence, able in some
real measure to contemplate the whole, of which, mechanically
considered, it is a minor product and a rare ingredient. Here, again,
the change was altogether positive. It was not the escape of a vessel
in a storm with loss of spars and rigging, not a shortening of sail to
save the masts and make a port of refuge. It was rather the emergence
from narrow channels to an open sea. We had propelled the great ship,
finding purchase here and there for slow and uncertain movement. Now,
in deep water, we spread large canvas to a favouring breeze.

The scattered traces of design might be forgotten or obliterated. But
the broad impression of Order became plainer when seen at due distance
and in sufficient range of effect, and the evidence of love and wisdom
in the universe could be trusted more securely for the loss of the
particular calculation of their machinery.

Many other topics of faith are affected by modern biology. In some of
these we have learnt at present only a wise caution, a wise
uncertainty. We stand before the newly unfolded spectacle of
suffering, silenced; with faith not scientifically reassured but still
holding fast certain other clues of conviction. In many important
topics we are at a loss. But in others, and among them those I have
mentioned, we have passed beyond this negative state and find faith
positively strengthened and more fully expressed.

We have gained also a language and a habit of thought more fit for the
great and dark problems that remain, less liable to damaging
conflicts, equipped for more rapid assimilation of knowledge. And by
this change biology itself is a gainer. For, relieved of fruitless
encounters with popular religion, it may advance with surer aim along
the path of really scientific life-study which was reopened for modern
men by t