phy, or he does not. If be does, then there will be trouble; for the evolutionist will ask for evidence that will scarcely be forthcoming. If he does not, but merely asks the evolutionist to allow in his system a place for the sense of sin, the reply of the latter will undoubtedly be: My dear sir, you are going to unnecessary trouble in this matter; for the school to which I belong not only recognizes the fact to which you refer, but may even claim to have scientifically explained it years ago.
The third test-doctrine is that of redemption. Evolution must bow to this also, or else go on its way to destruction. At first sight the condition may seem hard, but Dr. Abbott has a rare faculty for minimizing difficulties. Just as he illustrated the Fall for us by referring to the decadence of Greece, Italy, and the Southern States of the Union—the points of comparison in the latter case being "the moral utterances of Jefferson and Madison," on the one hand, and those of the pro-slavery leaders of the period just prior to secession on the other—so, when it comes to expounding redemption, he exhibits it to us in the action of a higher personality upon a lower: that, for example, of father, mother, or teacher upon the wayward character of a child. It is true that he adds: "No soul, and so no aggregation of souls, can climb up to God; he stoops down and lifts us up to himself." But this, again, is manifestly the language of devotion. How can science take any cognizance of such terms? Professor Huxley spoke not irreverently, but simply as a man of common sense, when, in his recent controversy with Mr. Gladstone, he observed that he could not match any detail of the nebular hypothesis with the scriptural statement that "the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters." To throw such declarations at the man of science, and ask him what he makes of them, is eminently unreasonable. They may and do find an echo in the religious nature; but they do not lend themselves to any kind of scientific appraisement. The business of science, it can not be too often repeated, is not to force its way into men's hearts, and lay a ruthless hand upon the altar of the religious life. It is none of its business to apply rule or plummet, or any other instruments of exact determination, to the religious aspirations, or to the forms or formulas in which these express themselves. Its business is with definite, determinate facts or statements; it builds alone upon these, it concerns itself alone with these. It respects the religious life, and would willingly draw a wide precinct around it to preserve it from all undue intrusion. But, on the other hand, it claims complete independence within its own region, and will not surrender one atom of determinate fact, or forego a single one of its conclusions, because, forsooth, some one asserts that the interests of religion are involved in having the fact or the conclusion so, rather than so! Religion has to learn that it can neither make nor mold facts, nor arbitrarily control logical processes. It must learn to be self-sufficing in its own
