Nay, there may be, as was pointed out in the
last Lecture, an evolution in our knowledge even of the Moral Law, just
as there is an evolution in our knowledge of mathematics. The fulness of
its meaning can become clearer and ever clearer as generation learns
from generation. But the principle of the Moral Law, its universality,
its supremacy, cannot come out of any development of human nature any
more than the necessity of mathematical truth can so come. It stands not
on experience, and is its own evidence. Nor indeed have any of the
attempts to show that everything in man (religion included) is the
product of Evolution ever touched the question how this conception of
universal supremacy comes in. It is treated as if it were an
unauthorised extension from our own experience to what lies beyond all
experience. This, however, is to deny the essence of the Moral Law
altogether: that Law is universal or it is nothing.
Now, when we compare the account of the creation and of man given by the
doctrine of Evolution with that given in the Bible, we see at once that
the two are in different regions. The purpose of giving the accounts is
different; the spirit and character of the accounts is different; the
details are altogether different.
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