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II.

THE CONCESSIONS OF EVOLUTIONISTS.

THE FORTY-SEVENTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN THE MEIONAON OCT. 9.

"IF every thing is governed by law, and if all the power is in the physical universe that ever was there, where is God? In the intention." PROFESSOR BENJAMIN PIERCE, Unitarian Review,

June 1877, p. 665.

"IN regard to the physical universe, it might be better to substitute for the phrase 'government by laws' 'government according to laws,' meaning thereby the direct exertion of the Divine Will, or operation of the First Cause in the Forces of Nature, according to certain constant uniformities which are simply unchangeable, because, having been originally the expression of Infinite Wisdom, any change would be for the worse." — DR. W. B. CARPENTER, Mental Physiology, chap. xx.

II.

THE CONCESSIONS OF EVOLUTIONISTS.

ARISTOTLE said of Socrates that he invented the arts of definition and induction. But Socrates, we know, was not a teacher of logic; he was the investigator of ethical truth; and it was in the endeavor to satisfy a distinctively theological thirst that he smote the rocks at the foot of the Acropolis, and caused to gush forth there these crystalline headsprings of the scientific method. Unless we think boldly, north, south, east, and west, and syllogistically, and on our knees, we do not think at all. A Greek teacher of morals first taught us to think in this manner, and, as instruments of ethical research, invented definition and induction. The scientific method thus had a theological origin. Plato first elaborated it; but he drew all the quenching power of the stream of his philosophy from those pristine springs of definition and induction which Socrates opened. Aristotle, no doubt, was the earliest to give a scientific form to logic as a system; but his river of philosophy was only the continuation of the stream beginning under the Acropolis, where the terrific force of the blow of Socrates had caused these healing waters

to burst out. It was in theology that the scientific method first found full application. However much we may criticise the Greek and Latin schoolmen and early theologians, it remains true that they elaborated Aristotle's logic, and drew out of it a system of induction and deduction, which was only turned a little aside to new objects by Bacon. I am not one of those who think Macaulay's essay on Bacon faultless. Gladstone has lately shown that the contrast between the system of Aristotle and that of Bacon was not as great as the brilliant historian, who loved antithetical contrasts so well, would make it out to be. The scientific method existed before Bacon's time, and it had received its elaboration chiefly in the schools of theology. But now, since Bacon's time, we hear the scientific method spoken of as if it never had a mother. We are told that religious science must borrow from physical science the scientific method. Religious science will not borrow what is her own. Aristotle affirms that it was in the search after moral truth that Socrates discovered definition and induction. Theology demands in this age, what she has demanded in every age, that we should be loyal to the scientific method. We must have definition; we must have induction; clear ideas and spiritual purposes conjoined are the only deadly intellectual weapons. When a haughty attitude is assumed by physical science in the name of the scientific method, all that religious science has to do is to show that she was the mother of that method, to adhere to it herself, and to hold to it, a little mercilessly, physical science also. [Applause.]

Among the concessions of evolutionists, these are notorious:

1. That spontaneous generation must have occurred, or the doctrine of evolution as held by Huxley and his school cannot be true.

2. That spontaneous generation has never been known to occur.

3. That it is against all the ascertained analogy of nature to suppose that it ever has occurred.

4. That, if spontaneous generation has not occurred, it must be admitted that a supernatural act originated life in the primordial cell or cells.

5. That the doctrine of evolution as held by Huxley cannot be true, unless some bridge can be found to span the chasm between the living and the notliving.

6. That the present state of knowledge furnishes us with no such bridge.

Who makes all these far-reaching concessions? Professor Huxley. Where? In a most suggestive article on "Biology," published in "The Encyclopædia Britannica," the ninth edition of which, as you are aware, is now issuing from the press.

It is not asserted by this Lectureship that a doctrine of natural selection cannot be proved unless spontaneous generation can be shown to be a possibility. I assert, however, that the doctrine of evolution "as held by Huxley and his school" cannot stand, unless spontaneous generation can be shown to have been a fact. This is Huxley's own concession. He says, "If the hypothesis of evolution is true,

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