ARTICLE IV.

THE EVOLUTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

I.

BY THE REV. W. M. LISLE, WEST NEWTON, MASS.

EVOLUTION DEFINED.

IT is the principle of progressive continuity in the material and moral universe. It does not account for original beginnings, but for the unfolding of all things from such beginnings.

Infidel and Christian evolutionists agree as to a First Cause: they differ as to the personality of that Cause. The former make the law of evolution self-executing; not only in the development of nature, but also in the creation of new beginnings-origin of species. The latter make God the originating and executive power of this and all other laws of nature. As gravitation is the divine method of sustaining the cosmos, so is evolution the divine plan for developing it. It is creation by natural process, but not so natural that it does not use supernatural aid in bridging the chasms between the different planes of nature.

Different qualities are developed by natural process; these different qualities when brought together under proper conditions, produce a new plane of creation. This is nature's birth. When hydrogen and oxygen are brought in contact, water is born. This combination nature is helpless to effect. There are too many elements to be arranged. Three different chemicals brought together in the green leaves of plants in the presence of sunlight, will produce living protoplasm. But this requires supernatural teleology; Christian Evolu

tion therefore includes, not only natural process of development, but also direct supernatural combinations, by which nature mounts the rising rounds of the universe. And even here the divine touch is not always abrupt. Birth of something entirely new and different may result from the combination of certain forms of energy; or this may be made with embryos, and both develop together until the point of birth is reached, when a new order of creation is produced.

In that sense it may be true that the highest as well as the lowest parts of nature are the result of natural law; that what at last came to birth in man was contained in the womb of nature, as the life principle of animals and plants. But the point to be maintained is, the divine touch somewhere by which nature is born from above into a new creation, whether plant, animal, or man.

II. IS EVOLUTION ESTABLISHED?

It is safe to say that nine-tenths of Christian scientists now accept the doctrine of progressive continuity. The principle in its minor details has not been verified, but as a general fact it is certain.

Its acceptance is necessitated by the facts of geology and astronomy, which proclaim the universality and continuity of law. The same law of gravitation controls a grain of sand that holds together the planetary system. In like manner the planetary system is developed by the same law that now controls the development of an egg into a bird, or a human seed into a man.

God works through infinite space with the law of gravitation, through infinite time with the law of evolution. In answer to the fear which this doctrine now excites in the Christian world, it may be said that the science of astronomy and geology were still more terrifying, but have resulted in far nobler conceptions of the God of nature, as the God of revelation; the same must be true of evolution.

These remarks as to evolution in general seem necessary as a basis for the evolution of Christianity. For if evolution be true in nature, then it must be true in Christianity; since there is one God, by whom, and in whom, all things exist. This will more clearly appear as we consider:—

1. The Physical Nature of Man.

The evolution of Christianity includes the human body. The opening words of the Bible concern the origin of it, and its closing chapters, its immortality. Science tells us that the law of continuity, connecting it with preceding physical forms, had to do with its origin, and Revelation declares the operation of the same law, in the transition of the material into the resurrection body. Of the first, we can speak more definitely than of the second. Man's body proclaims its origin. Its chemical constituents, its structure, and functions link him with the higher animals.

We are not of those who believe that the Bible obliges us to hold, in the face of Science, that God created all fossil remains in six literal days. Nor do we believe that God made man out of the dust, as a child makes dirt-pies. Nor, on the other hand, do we believe that man was not made at all, only "growed" as Topsy, but that both are true; that his body is the result of divine agency by natural process, that is, that the human species, like all other new species, developed up to a certain point in the lower order, and was brought to the birth point by divine combinations, so that a new order of beings resulted.

2. Man's Moral Nature.

This is the counter and superior part to the physical; that which lifts him not only above animal life, but above his own physical nature. But this nature also in its lower ranges gives unmistakable evidence of continuous connection with pre-existent life. It is the relation of shadow to substance, promise to fulfilment, different not only in degree, but in kind, and yet the resemblance is so great as to prove a law of continuity.

Animal consciousness foreshadows human self-consciousness; animal will,-man's free will; instinct,-rational intelligence; sign language,-human speech. The lower passes into the higher, not by a self-development, but by a supernatural birth, which begins a new order of existence. Man now becomes a personality and so a master of material destiny. This was a part of God's work, when he made man a "living soul."

But man is more than this. His moral nature has a higher range; he is a spiritual and immortal being. Does the law of evolution still hold? We think it does; we have passed beyond matter into spirit. But it is still natural law in the spiritual world.

It is the same law operating at the two ends of the ladder. Animal consciousness, will, and instinct were the bases of self-consciousness, free will, and reason in man, and these in turn are the bases of man's spiritual nature,—a nature not self-developed, but born into being by a direct revelation of God's nature to him, by which he was made in God's image, and became a child of God-a creature of immortality. It is at this point that the Bible takes up man's history and unfolds it to the present time. This unfolding, we believe, will very strongly show the evolution of Christianity. According to the Bible, man was created an innocent but not a perfect being. That is, he was without the knowledge of evil, and was innocent, instead of virtuous; a pure being, untested by temptation. He was, therefore, not a perfect being; neither innocence nor happiness is perfection. Innocence was the gift of God in man's creation; but this innocence was given man as a basis on which to work out a character of virtue, which is the goal of humanity.

Innocence is a pre-established condition; virtue is selfacquired. Hence the forbidden tree in Eden. Man did not prove equal to the test, and so lost both virtue and innocence.

Sin, primarily, was not so much a fall from a higher to

a lower, as a failure to rise from a lower to a higher,—not so much eating of the forbidden tree, as failure to partake of the Tree of Life. The latter represented communion and correspondence with God, and had innocent man continued to reach out for this he would not have fallen. But, instead, he permitted Satan's suggestions concerning God to break this correspondence, and then followed the degradation of the forbidden fruit. Man's refusal to choose the higher, preceded and conditioned his fall to the lower, and the essence of sin is, therefore, in that refusal, whatever may cause the will to make it.

To be out of correspondence with God is death, as illustrated in both the first and second Adam. Jesus said, "To know God is eternal life;" that is, to be in union with him. Immanuel came to form the connecting link. sin of man is the neglect or refusal to avail himself of that The crowning connection, both in seeking and growing into the divine correspondence.

Man is lost now, as Adam was, by not grasping the higher, rather than by falling to the lower. The higher is the new birth by which such correspondence is effected.

Had man remained innocent, a perfect race would in time have been developed. This would not have followed from Adam's innocence alone. The race fell in him because he was the first man, but each one after him would have had to fight his own battle, and gain his own victory. In case all had succeeded, the topic of this article would be, the evolution of Humanity. But when innocence was lost, and the progressive continuity of the race was interrupted and destroyed, man became spiritually dead. His centripetal force was gone. His development was swiftly and endlessly away from God. He reverted to his original type of savage animalism, and yet, as a self-conscious and free-acting being, retained a sense of accountability, that filled him with fear and suffering. The Creator could do one of two things. In