While they have seen the phenomenon, these men have not known what to make of it. It is
useless to tell the younger naturalists that there is no truth in the doctrine of development, for
they know that there is truth, which is not to be set aside by denunciation. Religious
philosophers might be more profitably employed in showing them the religious aspects of the
doctrine of development; and some would be grateful to any who would help them to keep their
old faith in God and the Bible with their new faith in science. But we must at the same time
point out the necessary limits of the doctrine, and rebuke those unwise because conceited men
who, when they have made a few observations in one department of physical nature, being
commonly profoundly ignorant of every other -- particularly of mental and moral science --
imagine that they call explain everything by the one law of evolution. But there is a large and
important body of facts which these hypotheses can not cover. Development implies an original
matter with high endowments. Whence the original matter? It is acknowledged, by its most
eminent expounder, that evolution can not account for the first appearance of life. Greatly to the
disappointment of some of his followers, is obliged to postulate three or four germs of life
created by God. To explain the continuance of life, he is obliged to call in a pangenesis, or
universal life, which is just a vague phrase for that inexplicable thing life, and life is just a mode
of God's action. Plants, the first life that appeared, have no sensation. How did sensation come
in? Whence animal instinct? Whence affection -- the affection of a mother for her offspring, of a
patriot for his country, of a Christian for his Saviour? Whence intelligence? Whence
discernment of duty as imperative? It is felt by all students of mental science that is weak when
he seeks to account for these high ideas and sentiments. Careful, as being so trained, in
noticing the minutest peculiarities of plants and animals, and acquainted as he has made
himself with the appetites and habits of animals, he seems utterly incapable of understanding
man's higher capacities and noble aspirations -- of seeing how much is involved in
consciousness, in personal identity, in necessary truth, in unbending rectitude; he explains
them only by overlooking their essential peculiarities. It is allowed that geology does not show
an unbroken descent of the lower animals from the higher; on the contrary, it is ever coming to
breaks, and, in the case of a number of tribes of the lower animals, the more highly organized
forms appear first, and are followed by a degeneracy. It is acknowledged that in the historical
ages we do not see such new endowments coming in by natural law -- the plant becoming
animal, or the monkey becoming man. That matter should of itself develop into thought is a
position which neither observation nor reason sanctions. Science gives no countenance to it.
Common-sense turns away from it. Philosophy declares that this would be an effect without a
cause adequate to produce it.
But these inquiries have brought us face to face with a remarkable body of facts. The known
effects in the world -- the order, beauty, and beneficence -- point to the nature and character of
their cause; and this not an unknown God, as Herbert Spencer maintains, but a known God.
"The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
from the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." But in the very midst of
the good there is evil: the good is shown in removing the evil, in relieving suffering, in solacing
sorrow, and conquering sin. Evil, properly speaking, can not appear till there are animated
beings, and as soon as sentient life appears there is pain, which is an evil. It does look as if in
the midst of arrangements contrived with infinite skill there is some derangement. It may turn
out that the Bible doctrine, so much ridiculed in the present day, of there being a Satan, an
adversary, opposed to God and good, has a deep foundation in the nature of things, even as it
has confirmation in our experience without and within us, where we find that when we would do
good, evil is present with us.
... How curious, should it turn out that these scientific inquirers, so laboriously digging in the
earth, have, all unknown to themselves, come upon the missing link which is partially to
reconcile natural and revealed religion. Our English Titan is right when he says that at the
basis of all phenomena we come to something unknown and unknowable. He would erect an
altar to the unknown God, and Professor Huxley would have the worship paid there to be
chiefly of the silent sort. But a Jew, born at Tarsus, no mean city in Greek philosophy, and
brought up at the feet of Gamaliel -- but subdued, on the road to Damascus, by a greater
teacher than any in Greece or Jewry -- told the men of Athens, who had erected an altar to the
unknown God, "Whom ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you." It does look as if later
science had come in view of the darkness brooding on the face of the deep without knowing of