The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

Now let us consider the opinions of our spiritual guides. At the Shrewsbury Church Conference, in 1896, Archbishop Temple said that, “in his opinion, the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution would prove a great help to Christian thought and Christian life.” In his book, The Relations between Religion and Science, he states that “the doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent and beneficent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before.” A decade has passed, and still how few Christians know of this “help,” of this “stronger argument”! In the course of his address at the Weymouth Church Conference in 1905, the Bishop of Gloucester admitted that “Darwin’s teaching on evolution and development” had “revolutionised our ideas of God’s action in nature.” If this be so, how comes it that such a vast number of the pious still adhere to the old ideas? Is it not the duty of the pastor to educate his flock? What “ideas of God’s action in nature” are missionaries even now putting into the heads of their converts? If we inquired of the average religionist, should we find that his or her ideas had been revolutionised? Not only are worshippers in the House of God kept in ignorance, but theological students are distinctly warned against the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution. For instance, Dr.

Orr, a professor of apologetics, delivered a course of lectures before the professors and students of the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1903, the object of which was to show the dangers that must accrue to the Faith if the theories of Darwin were accepted in their entirety. He stoutly denied that man and woman were an evolution by slow stages from creatures that had gone before, and asserted that the first man came into being, as did the first woman, by a special act of creation. Unfortunately for the validity of his assertion he labours under the delusion that science concedes that man, or anything like man, cannot be traced further back than the post-glacial period, and that the brain capacity and physical characteristics of primeval man stood on as high a level as the average man of to-day!6

In a recently-published letter,7 written by Charles Kingsley to a correspondent, we read: “My own belief in the general truth of my friend Darwin’s views—which deepen day by day as I verify them—has only given me wider and deeper and nobler notions of God’s works in the material universe.” He then proceeds to illustrate his own thoughts by a charming little story of a certain old heathen Khan, who was delighted with the idea of a God so wise that he made all things make themselves. This old Khan and Charles Kingsley overlook an objection which to myself, and to many others, seems quite insuperable—namely, that a God so wise and merciful would have seen his way to prevent that frightful wastefulness and cruelty which is part and parcel of the evolutionary process. But more of this difficulty anon.

To give another example of a clerical evolutionist: the Rev. G. S. Streatfield, vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, on May 22nd, 1901, read a paper at the Southport Conference on “Questions that Must be Faced,” in which he conceded that “the fact of Evolution is now hardly questioned in the scientific world—one might almost say in the world of thought.” He, too, is charmed with the new theory, for he says: “It is, I suppose, generally agreed that the evolutionist has worthier, more rational, more truly philosophical views of the Divine Will and Action than those who hold the traditional theory.” Clerics of his stamp and school are now becoming more outspoken, and admit their convictions in public instead of in writings that are likely to be seen only by a select few. Only lately the Dean of Westminster, addressing a large gathering of Sunday-school teachers, told them that the idea that the human species was separately created was given up, and the fact of man’s descent from lower organisms accepted. While admiring his candour, one cannot help calling to mind that in 1860 Professor Huxley was utterly ridiculed by erudite scholars of the Church for making a precisely similar statement.

Between those who accept and those who entirely reject Evolution there are various shades of opinion. There are those who accept everything short of the evolution of certain mental faculties; although students of comparative psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties of animals differ from those in man in degree only, not in their essence. There are those like the Rev. John Urquhart, author of a brochure called Roger’s Reasons, who seek to reconcile the Bible story of creation with the Evolution theory, although any such interpretation was put out of court long ago by Professor Huxley’s reply to Mr. Gladstone.8 There are those who, like Dr. Torrey,9 persist in altogether denying our animal origin, although there is hardly a single scientist, hardly a single thoughtful man, who has studied the subject without bias, who believes anything else.

The number of clergymen who openly admit the truth of Evolution is as yet comparatively small. The few who do express their opinion openly, profess to be delighted with the new light that has now been shed upon God’s methods. The question arises, How is it, then, that we hear so little about Evolution from the pulpit, and that, consequently, the faithful are kept in ignorance of this fresh revelation? The answer is obvious: It is because the advanced divines have yet to educate their congregations up to their way of thinking, and the process has, for many reasons, to be conducted with extreme caution. They know full well that they have a difficult and dangerous task before them; that those who accept Evolution, but are unable to accept their opinions concerning its spiritual helpfulness, will lapse into agnosticism. They also know that their views are not popular with conservative believers.

The chief reason, perhaps, for pulpit reticence is that the enormous majority in the Church still remain hostile to this new doctrine. They consider it to be dangerous, and likely to unsettle people’s minds. Possibly in their inmost souls, if they have studied Evolution at all, they agree with a certain distinguished essayist who says: “A God who could have been deliberately guilty of them (the Evolutionary processes) would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.”10 The cruelty of the law of prey and struggle for existence, and the wastefulness of Nature’s arrangements for the reproduction of life (plant and animal alike), do, indeed, appear sufficient warrant for some such painful impression; while, as if this were not enough, there is for the Christian the additional difficulty of reconciling Evolution with the Bible story of the Creation and Fall of man. These various difficulties must now be carefully investigated.