" That was very much the state of mind of the
famous French atheists of the last century. But only think how
chaotic nature was to their minds compared to what she is to our
minds to-day. Just think how we have in the present century
arrived where we can see the bearings of one set of facts in nature
as collated with another set of facts, and contrast it with the
view which even the greatest of those scientific French
materialists could take. Consider how fragmentary and how lacking
in arrangement was the universe they saw compared with the universe
we can see to-day, and it is not strange that to them it could be
an atheistic world. That hostility between science and religion
continued as long as religion was linked hand in hand with the
ancient doctrine of special creation. But now that the religious
world has unmoored itself, now that it is beginning to see the
truth and beauty of natural science and to look with friendship
upon conceptions of evolution, I suspect that this temporary
antagonism, which we have fallen into a careless way of regarding
as an everlasting antagonism, will come to an end perhaps quicker
than we realize.
There is one point that is of great interest in this connection,
although I can only hint at it. Among the things that happened in
that dim past when man was coming into existence was the increase
of his powers of manipulation; and that was a factor of immense
importance.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43