Moral Law incapable of being evolved. Account given in Genesis
not at variance with doctrine of Evolution. Evolution of man not
inconsistent with dignity of humanity.
LECTURE VI.
APPARENT COLLISION BETWEEN RELIGION AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.
'Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and
not we ourselves.' _Psalm_ c. 3.
Religion is rooted in our spiritual nature and its fundamental truths
are as independent of experience for their hold on our consciences as
the truths of mathematics for their hold on our reason.
But as a matter of fact Religion has taken the form of a revelation. And
this introduces a new contact between Religion and Science, and of
necessity a new possibility of collision. There is not only possible
opposition or apparent opposition of Science in what is revealed, in
what we may call the actual substance of the revelation; but also in the
accessories and evidences of the revelation, which may be no actual part
of the revelation itself, but nevertheless are, to all appearance,
inseparably bound up with it. It is therefore no more than might have
been expected that the general postulate of the uniformity of nature
should appear to be contravened by the claim to supernatural power made
on behalf of revelation, and that the special, but just at present
leading scientific doctrine, the doctrine of Evolution, should be found
inconsistent with parts, or what appear to be parts, of the revelation
itself.
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