LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I V t R5 ITY 
 
 or 1 LLl NOIS
 
 z 
 
 THE OEIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 ACCORDING TO 
 
 REVELATION AND SCIENCE.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 ACCOKDING TO 
 
 REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 
 
 A LECTUEE 
 
 HAEVEY GOODWIN, D.D., 
 
 Lord Bishop of Carlisle, 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EYIDEKCE COMMITTEE OF THE 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE; 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS; 
 
 4, EOTAL EXCHANGE; AND 48, PICCADILXT, 
 1880.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following Lecture was composed at the re- 
 quest of the Committee of the Wakefield Church 
 Institute ; it formed one of a course, the subjects of 
 which were suggested by the Committee, It was 
 delivered at "Wakefield on December 4, 1879, and 
 subsequently at Halifax, Leeds, and Kendal. A rather 
 strong wish having been expressed at several of the 
 above-named places that the Lecture should be pub- 
 lished, I thought that the best course open to me 
 was to offer it to the Society for Promoting Chris- 
 tian Knowledge, as one of the Christian Evidence 
 series of publications. It is printed almost verbatim 
 as delivered. 
 
 H. CARLISLE. 
 EosE Castle, 
 January ^ 1880.

 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION 
 
 AND SCIENCE. 
 
 I AM not responsible for the phraseology of the 
 title of this Lecture. I feel bound to admit 
 that it is open to criticism ; and I propose for 
 a moment to criticise it, not for the sake of 
 finding" fault, but because it appears to me that 
 the remarks which I make upon the title of 
 my Lecture will be a good introduction to the 
 Lecture itself. 
 
 Take the words, " The Origin of the World 
 according to Science." You may have heard 
 of an author who wrote a famous treatise upon 
 "The Natural History of Irish Snakes;" the 
 treatise was probably the most compendious and 
 the most complete that was ever written ; and 
 it was all compressed into this emphatic sen- 
 tence, " There are no snakes in Ireland." In like 
 manner it might be truly said with regard to the 
 words which I have just now quoted, " There is 
 no Origin of the World according to Science."
 
 8 THE OllIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 Science, that is Natural or Physical Science, 
 treats of the laws which govern matter ; it 
 studies and arranges and explains material 
 phenomena ; it traces back the history of the 
 material universe in the past, and it calculates 
 not a little of that which will be in the future : 
 but it never gets to the actual origin of any- 
 thing ; it works upon that which it finds ready- 
 made to its hands ; it is cognisant of no time 
 when matter did not exist, and when the laws 
 of nature were other than they are now. Science 
 means knowledge ; and it may be safely asserted 
 that the origin of things, lying as it does ab- 
 solutely outside our experience, belongs to the 
 region of the unJcnoivable. 
 
 If we consider the other portion of my title, 
 " The Origin of the World according to Reve- 
 lation," we cannot precisely assert that there is 
 no such origin; but we may assert that even 
 Revelation itself can assign no origin to the 
 world of such a kind as can be brought into 
 comparison with any alleged conclusion of 
 science. What Holy Scripture sa^^s of the 
 world is that God made it; and the assertion 
 is a very important one ; but it is not an asser- 
 tion of the same kind as those which can be 
 made concerning the material universe upon 
 the strength of scientific investigations : these
 
 ACCOEDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 9 
 
 investigations deal with what can be proved and 
 known concerning the things which we see : 
 they cannot by their very nature take any 
 account of a divine hand acting below the sur- 
 face ; the moment they do anything of this 
 kind they cease to be scientific. And therefore a 
 scientific man, so far as he is only a scientific 
 man, may believe in God or not believe in Him ; 
 he may be a devout worshipper of Him who has 
 revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ, or he 
 may be a blank atheist ; but whatever may be 
 his belief or unbelief, it does not properly come 
 into contact with his scientific investigations. 
 You will see at once that this is true with re- 
 spect to the pure sciences, such as geometiy and 
 algebra ; it is really quite as true, though not 
 perhaps so obviously true, in the case of physical 
 science, which involves observation of facts, 
 legitimate deductions from observations made, 
 conclusions from these deductions, and nothing 
 more. 
 
 Hence therefore, if I insisted upon construing 
 my thesis literally and strictly, I might perhaps 
 be led to say that there was no such thing as 
 an origin of the world according to Science, and 
 scarcely anything which could be called an 
 origin of the world according to Revelation ; 
 and further, that even if any two things existed
 
 10 THE ORIGIN OF THE WOULD 
 
 which could be so described, they could not be 
 brought into comparison one with the other, 
 because they would belong essentially to dif- 
 ferent departments of thought. 
 
 And permit me to say that the view of the 
 subject which I have thus brought under your 
 notice is not altogether unworthy of considera- 
 tion. Men's minds are sometimes perplexed 
 when there is no cause for perplexity. They are 
 told that Science says this^ and that Revelation 
 says that^ and that this and that do not agree, 
 and that therefore one of them must give way. 
 Before however we come to this conclusion, 
 which may possibly involve throwing away that 
 which no wise man would willingly lose, there 
 are three questions to be settled. First, is it 
 quite clear that Science does say this ? Secondly, 
 is it quite clear that Revelation does say that ? 
 And, thirdly and principally, is it quite clear 
 that the utterances of Science and Revelation 
 are so entirely in pari materie that they can 
 be brought into comparison with each other, 
 and that they must necessarily impinge ? Per- 
 haps what I am going to say presently may 
 illustrate the application of these cautions; 
 anyhow I am sure that the cautions are use- 
 ful, and also that they are not unfrequently 
 neglected.
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 11 
 
 But I do not intend to construe the language 
 of my thesis too strictly ; and I will tell you 
 what I understand it to mean. 
 
 I understand it as expressing the feelings of 
 men who may be supposed to say to me some- 
 thing of this kind : " We have an uneasy feeling 
 that what scientific books tell us about the 
 early condition of the world does not agree with 
 that which we read in the Book of Genesis. 
 Can you tell us whether this feeling is a true 
 one, or only a nightmare? Can you help to 
 allay our uneasiness ? " 
 
 Supposing this to be the real meaning of the 
 thesis which I have undertaken to discuss, I 
 would say at once that I think the subject is 
 one upon which it is worth my while to speak, 
 and that I will endeavour so to speak that it 
 shall be worth your while to listen. After 
 much careful consideration I have come to the 
 conclusion, that the best course for me to follow 
 will be this. I will endeavour to put side by 
 side the history of creation as we have it in the 
 book of Genesis, and the history of creation as 
 we have it in a certain modern book. I should 
 scarcely have thought that any scientific man 
 would have ventured to describe a work as 
 "The History of Creation;" but there is such 
 a work, and it is by the hand of a man whose
 
 12 THE ORIGIN OP THE WOELD 
 
 name is well known in the scientific world, 
 Ernst Haeckel, Professor in the University of 
 Jena; the book is translated into English, and 
 I shall refer to the English translation. This 
 book furnishes me with exactly what I want 
 for the purpose of this lecture, namely, a 
 statement of the views of an eminent man of 
 science expressed in a tone as hostile as can 
 possibly be to every kind of religious belief. 
 I shall take this book as representing not what 
 I myself believe to be the " origin of the world 
 according to science," but what might popularly 
 be so described ; and I take it as such for the 
 purpose of this lecture, because I think the 
 an ti -revelation view could scarcely be put more 
 decidedly or more bitterly. I thus reduce 
 the question to be discussed this evening to 
 that of " The History of Creation according 
 to Moses,^' versus " The History of Creation 
 according to Professor Ernst Haeckel." I shall 
 take each of these books separately, making 
 such remarks as seem to me to be necessary, and 
 then I shall conclude my lecture with some ob- 
 servations which will arise from the comparison 
 of the two.
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 13 
 
 I. The '•'' Kidory of Creation according 
 to Moses. '^ 
 
 In dealing with any book, or any document, 
 it is highly desirable to understand in the first 
 place to what class of writing it belongs. In 
 the case of books and documents in ordinary 
 use, this point is generally known without 
 difficulty. If a person takes up the " Times " 
 newspaper, or a number of " Punch," or a 
 volume of " Tennyson," he knows at once what 
 is the character of the writing he has in hand, 
 and treats it accordingly. Without this kind 
 of previous understanding with your author, 
 you may easily get wrong. If you read what 
 Lord Byron says of" solitude" in Childe Harold, — 
 you will remember how he tells us that " to sit 
 on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell," without 
 any companion but nature in her wildest forms, 
 *' is not solitude ; " and that true solitude is to 
 be found in the crowd and buzz of men, none 
 of whom know you, or care for you, or pity 
 you ; — if you read this description of solitude, 
 and then look into Johnson's dictionary, you 
 will find that you have got somewhat contra- 
 dictory definitions : why ? because Johnson was 
 a lexicographer, and Byron was a poet. Or, 
 again, when Wordsworth writes so finely, " the
 
 14 THE ORTGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 child's the father of the man," he gives an order 
 of generation which would scai'cely square with 
 medical science. Nay, even in the case of such 
 a plain-speaking author as the Editor of the 
 "Times," I remember hearing of a foreigner 
 living in England, but presumably not well 
 acquainted with Shakspeare, who, on seeing a 
 leading article one morning commencing with 
 the words, " There's something rotten in the 
 state of Denmark," rushed off to the Stock 
 Exchange for the purpose of selling some 
 Danish bonds before the collapse of such se- 
 curities should take place. 
 
 I have said that with regard to ordinary 
 literature you generally know to what class any 
 book or writing you may take in hand belongs. 
 But this is not so with ancient documents ; 
 least of all is it so with the first chapter of 
 Genesis ; I do not say that it is impossible to 
 classify it, but I say that it is not obvious at 
 first sight what its class is, and that great errors 
 may arise from an erroneous classification. 
 
 (i) Is it scientific? Certainly not. There 
 was no such thing as science, properly so called, 
 at the time at which it was written. If any 
 one should say that it may be scientific, because 
 it is given by direct revelation of God, and is 
 therefore independent of the condition of human
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 15 
 
 knowledge at the time when the revelation was 
 given, I should reply that however supernatural 
 the influence might be under which the docu- 
 ment was written, still it must, in order to be 
 intelHgible, address itself to the condition of 
 mind and knowledge in which those people were 
 to whom it was addressed : and as the people to 
 whom it was addressed did certainly not possess 
 even the rudiments of science, it is inconceivable 
 that a revelation addressed to them can be pro- 
 perly described as a scientific document. 
 
 Moreover, it should be observed, that the 
 height of science of one century may be the 
 depth of ignorance of the next; at all events 
 scientific conceptions rapidly change. In reality, 
 science properly so called, I mean natural science, 
 is not as yet much more than two hundred years 
 old ; and it would be absurd to deal with a " His- 
 tory of Creation," which dates back some three 
 or four thousand years, as a history to be ex- 
 amined and discussed upon principles which are 
 only intelligible to people of quite modern times, 
 and not even to all, or nearly all, of them. 
 
 Still further, there is not the slightest pre- 
 tence in the '' History of Creation according 
 to Moses " to treat the subject scientifically. 
 Wherever the word of God or the hand of God 
 is introduced into any account of natural things.
 
 16 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 there science cannot find a place. Every scien- 
 tific man knows this ; he says, " my business is 
 to trace out laws and to go back from one cause 
 to another, but I can admit nothing super- 
 natural." Of course not : the mpernatural does 
 not belong to natural science, by the very force 
 of the terms. This does not prove that the 
 supernatural has no existence ; it only shews that 
 any document which involves it is not scien- 
 tific, and must not be treated as such. Hence, 
 I conclude that a document which is based upon 
 the phrase, '^ In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth," cannot be regarded as 
 in any proper sense of the word scientific. 
 
 (2) Is it historical? In a certain sense the 
 name historical might be rightly applied, inas- 
 much as the first chapter of Genesis undoubtedly 
 undertakes to record events, which actually hap- 
 pened " in the beginning : '•* in fact we have 
 already described the document as a " History 
 of Creation." But it should be observed that 
 in using the epithet historical^ we do so in a 
 very different sense from that in which the 
 word is applied to ordinary histories. For 
 example, one of the most essential elements of 
 history is time. "There was in the days of 
 Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest 
 named Zacharias," writes S. Luke in the open-
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 17 
 
 ing of his Gospel ; that is the genuine his- 
 torical style. You can compare such history with 
 other history, examine its authorities, test its 
 accuracy : you can do nothing of the kind with 
 a document which opens with the words, " In 
 the beginning,^' and then tells you what God 
 did. The divine agent, the manner of His 
 action, described as creation, and that by means 
 (when any means are specified) of His sjpolcen 
 word, the time when the action took place, and 
 the very nature of the action itself, all belong 
 to a region which no history can reach. You 
 may call it, if you please, transcendental history, 
 or you may give it some other name of distinc- 
 tion ; but you will make a great mistake, and one 
 which may practically be very mischievous, if j^ou 
 sit down to the study of thje Mosaic ^' History of 
 Creation" with the same kind of thoughts and 
 the same canons of judgment running in your 
 mind, as those which have a right to find a place 
 there when you read any other historical book. 
 
 (3) Is it poetical ? This word describes the 
 character of the first chapter of Genesis better 
 than either of those which we have examined 
 already. Hugh Miller has a very fine passage 
 in his " Testimony of the Rocks," in which he 
 treats the several creative days as visions vouch- 
 safed to the eye of Moses in a condition of 
 c
 
 18 THE ORIGIN OF THE WOULD 
 
 trance ' ; and Chateaubriand in his Genie (hi 
 Christiamsme deals with the whole opening* of 
 the Book of Genesis as if it w^ere to be re- 
 f^arded as poetry 2. On the other hand, Pro- 
 fessor Stanley Leathes assures us that the 
 Mosaic history of creation is not poetry, but 
 as genuine prose as ever was written ^. It is 
 difficult perhaps to give an absolute definition 
 of poetry ; but I think that this may be safely 
 said, namely, that the basis of poetry is truth, 
 but truth told from an imaginative, and not 
 from a matter-of-fact, point of view. When 
 Wordsworth whites " the child's the father of 
 the man,^' he puts a profound truth in a most 
 
 * Testimony of the Rocks, Lecture TV : • The Mosaic 
 Vision of Creation,' a charming piece of reading, whether 
 the reader be convinced by it or not. 
 
 ^ See vol. i, chap, v, Jeunesse et vieillesse de la Terre. 
 A very curious chapter, in which the author represents the 
 world as called into existence with the birds' nests in the 
 trees, the lambs gambolling with their mothers, the nightin- 
 gales singing, &c. Had it been otherwise, *Une insipide 
 enfance de plantes, d'animaux, d'dldments, edt couronne une 
 terre sans poesie.' 
 
 ^ ' It has been the fashion, with some persons of late years, 
 to speak of the first chapter of Genesis as poetical. To re- 
 gard it as such has appeared to offer a wider and more con- 
 venient latitude of interpretation than to take it for what it 
 imdoubtedly is, plain and simple x^rose.^ — The Structure of the 
 Old Testament, p. 123.
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 19 
 
 emphatic way, just because his words prosaic- 
 ally taken are a mere paradox. There are some 
 things which can only be described poetically, 
 and the written accounts of which can only be 
 understood when their poetical character is re- 
 cognised ; and I venture to think that any 
 account of that which took place "in the begin- 
 ning," which involves the conception of '' crea- 
 tion," of which we have no experience, which 
 refers to the relation between the unseen God 
 and the visible creation, must in the nature of 
 things belong to this class ; if creation, as the 
 work of God, be described at all, it must be 
 poetically, figuratively, imaginatively, by re- 
 ference to processes of which we have experience, 
 and by means of pictures drawn therefrom. 
 
 (4) But once more, has not the " History of 
 Creation according to Moses " a character still 
 more pronounced than the poetical ? Is it not 
 above all things moral and didactic ? It seems to 
 me quite obvious that the history of the material 
 creation, of the formation of fishes and rej) tiles, 
 and birds and beasts, and the rest, is merely the 
 framework of the picture of the creation of man. 
 It matters little or nothing what the process was 
 by which the creation progressed from the chaos 
 with which the earth commenced its existence 
 to the settled cosmos in which it became the 
 c 1
 
 20 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 home of plants and living* things ; nor does it 
 matter how long- a time the transformation occu- 
 })ied, whether ten thousand or ten million years ; 
 but it does concern us very much to know, that, 
 \vhen the earth had been so prepared, God made 
 man " in His own image " and gave him the 
 highest place and the command of all. When 
 I find commentators and general readers troub- 
 ling themselves about little points connected 
 with the history of creation, and not fixing 
 their minds upon the one great point which 
 gives it all its interest, namely, the creation of 
 man in the image of God, I cannot help com- 
 paring such treatment of the precious document 
 with the conduct of a man who holds in his 
 hand his father's will leaving him heir to a vast 
 property, and who engages himself in examining 
 whether the lawyer who drew the will had been 
 particular to cross his t's and to dot his i's. 
 
 These remarks will be sufficient to indicate to 
 you the manner in which, according to my 
 judgment, the '^ History of Creation according 
 to Moses" ought to be regarded. The docu- 
 ment is not to be treated as scientific, or as 
 historical, but as in a certain sense poetical, and 
 still more emphatically as moral and didactic. 
 I of course leave out of consideration all question 
 of its character as given by divine inspiration ;
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 21 
 
 the treatment of that question would lead me 
 into a field upon which, for several reasons, I 
 must not enter ; all that I have said has been 
 carefull}^ put together for the purpose of being" 
 taken up and candidly considered by persons 
 holding different opinions, or even no opinion 
 at all, on the subject of divine inspiration. 
 I trust that the man who is most firmly per- 
 suaded that the history of Creation which we 
 have in our Bibles is given by inspiration of 
 God, will have heard nothing from me tending 
 to shake that belief; at the same time I shall 
 be glad if my remarks, and those which are to 
 follow, might prove helpful to those, who either 
 are not so persuaded, or feel their belief in some 
 way or other shaken and tending to slip from 
 their grasp. 
 
 As I am going presently to put before you 
 the "■ History of Creation according to Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel," I should like to call your atten- 
 tion to the impression made upon his mind by 
 the " History of Creation according to Moses." 
 It should be observed that the Mosaic history 
 is the only one belonging to ancient times which 
 Professor Haeckel regards as worthy of notice : 
 this in itself is somewhat remarkable; after 
 referring to it in the passage which I am going 
 to read to you, he passes over no less than three
 
 22 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 thousand years, as containing no contribution 
 to the history of Creation which would be of 
 any interest, and he comes down with one great 
 leap from Moses to Linnaeus, who flourished 
 less than two centuries back ! Now observe 
 what Professor Haeekel says : I must trouble 
 you with a somewhat long quotation : — 
 
 ''The Mosaic history of Creation . . . has 
 enjoyed, down to the present day, general recog- 
 nition in the whole Jewish and Christian world 
 of civilization. Its extraordinary success is 
 explained not only by its close connection with 
 Jewish and Christian doctrines, but also by the 
 simple and natural chain of ideas which runs 
 through it, and which contrasts favourably with 
 the confused mythology of creation current 
 among most of the other ancient nations. 
 First, God creates the earth as an inorganic 
 body ; then He separates light from dark- 
 ness, then water from the dry land. Now the 
 earth has become habitable for organisms, and 
 plants are first created, animals later ; and 
 among the latter the inhabitants of the water 
 and the air first, afterwards the inhabitants of 
 the dry land. Finally, God creates man, the last 
 of organisms, in His own image, and as the ruler 
 of the earth. 
 
 " Two great and fundamental ideas, common
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 23 
 
 also to the non-miraculous theory of develop- 
 ment," [i. e. the theory which Haeckel himself 
 adopts and expounds,] " meet us in this Mosaic 
 hypothesis of creation with surprising clearness 
 and simplicity, — the idea of separation or differ- 
 entiation, and the idea of progressive develop- 
 ment or ]perfecting. Although Moses looks upon 
 the results of the great laws of organic develop- 
 ment ... as the direct actions of a constructing 
 Creator, yet in his theory there lies hidden the 
 ruling idea of a progressive development and a 
 differentiation of the originally simple matter. 
 We can therefore bestow our just and sincere 
 admiration on the Jewish lawgiver's grand in- 
 sight into nature, and his simple and natural 
 hypothesis of creation, without discovering in it 
 a so-called ' divine revelation.' That it cannot 
 be such is clear from the fact that two great 
 fundamental errors are asserted in it, namely, 
 first, the geocentric error, that the earth is the 
 fixed central point of the whole universe, round 
 which the sun, moon, and stars move ; and 
 secondly, the anthropocentric error, that man is 
 the premeditated aim of the creation of the 
 earth, for whose service alone all the rest of 
 nature is said to have been created ^. The former 
 
 ^ Does Moses say quite as much as this ? " God saw every- 
 thing that He had made, and behold it was very good " (Gen. i.
 
 24 THE ORIGIN OF THE WOULD 
 
 of these errors was demolished hy Copernicus* 
 System of the Universe in the beginning" of the 
 sixteenth century, the latter by Lamarck's Doc- 
 trine of Descent in the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century" (vol. i, p. 38). 
 
 There is just one more sentence which I must 
 quote : 
 
 "The Bible/' writes Haeckel, "is not a 
 scientific book, but consists of records of the 
 history _, the laws, and the religion of the Jewish 
 people, the high merit of which, as a history of 
 civilization, is not impaired by the fact that in 
 all scientific questions it has no commanding 
 importance, and is full of gross errors" (p. 39). 
 
 I think you will agree with me that, upon the 
 whole, the " History of Creation according to 
 Moses '' comes very well and comfortably out of 
 the critical clutch of Professor Haeckel. You 
 will observe that he speaks of it in terms of 
 high commendation, sees in it a remarkable con- 
 formity in certain general features with the 
 teachins: of exact science, thinks no other an- 
 cient cosmogony worthy of notice, regards it in 
 fact as a lofty monument towering up above 
 everything else, and finding no rival for three 
 thousand years; and he specifies only two con- 
 
 31). The supremacy of man does not necessarily imply that 
 all nature was created solely for him.
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 25 
 
 spicuous errors, — the geocentric error, which is 
 of the same kind as that which we all commit 
 day by day when we speak of the sun rising ^, — 
 the other which he calls the antliro])o centric error, 
 and which is of a much more serious kind. It is 
 an error, says Professor Haeckel, to make man 
 the head of all, and to represent everything as 
 being made subject to him. Is this an error ? 
 If so, it is certainly not an exploded one : we 
 act upon it every day : to kill a thousand 
 monkeys is at the most only unjiistifiable monlcey- 
 cide, but to kill a man is murder. And how 
 has Lamarck exploded it ? By the doctrine of 
 descent; that is, by the hypothesis that man in 
 his perfection was developed out of something 
 else : he could not be developed out of any- 
 thing more lowly and more vile than that which 
 is assigned as his origin by Moses, namely, 
 the dust of the earth. But if man had been 
 developed — well, it matters not how, — what 
 does it signify ? the result is that which concerns 
 us ; and no doctrine of descent can ever make 
 plain men believe, that there is not an essential 
 dignity in man separating him from all other 
 
 ^ This kind of language, it is scarcely necessary to say, ia 
 used without offence in ordinary conversation and in popular 
 books ; but it may be worth while to add that it is so con- 
 venient that it is permitted freely in scientific treatises.
 
 26 THE ORIGIN OP THE WORLD 
 
 creatures, something* corresponding to that 
 which is so finely described by Moses, when 
 he says that God " breathed into man's nostrils 
 the breath of life," and so made him " a living- 
 soul!'^ 
 
 But observe that this antliroi:)Ocentric error, if 
 it be one at all, is a moral not a scientific error. 
 It is the business of natural science to examine 
 man's anatomy and the like, to compare his 
 frame with that of other animals, to make out 
 all that it can of his past history, and so forth ; 
 but a student of natural science, as such, has no 
 right to intrude into the region of morals, and 
 to speak of a doctrine concerning man's moral 
 superiority as an exploded error on the ground of 
 some physical hypothesis. What Haeckel calls 
 the anthropoceniric error is, if rightly under- 
 stood, almost the highest truth that man knows, 
 the truth without the existence of which all 
 other truth would be unknowable. If man 
 be not the centre, the crown, the end of crea- 
 tion, I do not know who or what is. To ob- 
 literate man would be not merely to detract 
 something considerable from the glory of the 
 world, but to sink the world into utter insigni- 
 ficance : it would be the drama of creation, with 
 Creation's Hamlet omitted. 
 
 It is well, however, that Haeckel has made
 
 ACCOEDIXG TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 27 
 
 the remark, because it really points out the 
 reason why it is necessary to oppose the teach- 
 ing of some of our modern scientific men. As 
 long as they confine themselves to genuine scien- 
 tific investigation, I, for one, would with all 
 my might claim for them the utmost freedom 
 of inquiry ; but when they pass into the region 
 of morals, and make physical speculations the 
 foundation of a battery for the destruction of 
 moral truth, then I think we are bound to ask 
 them to keep within their own boundaries, and 
 not to encroach upon their neighbours. 
 
 Having now said all that I think necessary, 
 at all events as much as my time will allow, 
 concerning the " History of Creation according 
 to Moses," I pass on to 
 
 II. The '' History of Creation according to 
 Professor Haeckel." 
 
 Let me remind you that the phrase " History 
 of Creation " is Professor Haeckel's, and not 
 mine. I should have been disposed to confine 
 the term creation to, or at all events to make it 
 include, the first act, whatever it may have 
 been or however it is to be described, by which 
 the germ of the present material universe came 
 into being. But this is not what Haeckel means.
 
 28 THE ORIGIN OF THE WOULD 
 
 He says that " Creation in the sense of the 
 coming into existence of matter does not concern 
 us at all. This process, if it ever took place, is 
 completely beyond human comprehension, and 
 can therefore never become the subject of sci- 
 entific enquiry." This is perfectly true ; and he 
 adds soon afterwards, " If any person feels the 
 necessity of conceiving" the coming into exist- 
 ence of matter as the work of a supernatural 
 creative power, of the creative force of something 
 outside matter, we have nothing to say against 
 it." You see, therefore, that our author does not 
 absolutely condemn us to atheism ; he says, 
 indeed, that " faith has its origin in the poetic 
 imagination," (an assertion which we perhaps 
 are not bound entirely to believe,) but when he 
 tells us that " where faith commences, science 
 ends," and that faith and science should be kept 
 strictly apart from each other, he says what is 
 quite true and very importantly true : one of 
 my complaints against this author is that he 
 has not acted up to the spirit of his ow^n prin- 
 ciples. He laughs to scorn, for example, the 
 notion of beneficence as having anything to do 
 with the arrangements of the world ; he is not 
 content to take matter as he finds it, without 
 reference to its origin, and to work out such 
 results as can be fairly worked out by observa-
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 29 
 
 tion and by inductive and deductive processes 
 of reason, whicli is what the pure student of 
 nature ought to do, but he goes out of the de- 
 partment of natural science altogether, and will 
 not permit us to see in the most ingenious 
 arrangements any manifestation of purpose or 
 any testimony borne by nature to the goodness 
 of God. 
 
 Let me quote a short passage from Professor 
 Haeckel's book, which will give you the key to 
 its general purpose : — ■ 
 
 " The determination of the position of man in 
 nature, and of his relations to the totality of 
 things — this question of all questions for man- 
 kind, as Huxley justly calls it — is finally solved 
 by the knowledge that man is descended from 
 animals. In consequence of Darwin's reformed 
 Theory of Descent, we are now in a position to 
 establish scientifically the groundwork of a 
 non-miraculous history of the develojament of the 
 human race " (vol. i, p. 6). 
 
 Professor Haeckel lays great stress upon and 
 repeats this phrase non-miraculous history^ by 
 which he means to say that Mr. Darwin's work 
 " On the Origin of Species," and his subsequent 
 book on " The Descent of Man, and Selection 
 in Relation to Sex," are sufiicient to explain, 
 without the notion of any divine interposition.
 
 30 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 the cxisteuce of you and mc, such as we are and 
 such as we shall be. 
 
 Let us examine this view of non-miraculous 
 creation ; and in doin^^ so let us grant all that 
 Mr. Darwin wishes to be granted : and let 
 us see how far the notion of non-miraculous 
 creation can be sustained. 
 
 In the first place, it is as nearly sure as anything 
 can be that this globe of ours was once a mass 
 of matter in a condition of intense heat, possibly 
 heat so intense as to make the whole mass 
 gaseous. Nothing of which we know under the 
 term life could possibly have existed in that 
 very hot primaeval mass ; consequently, when it 
 cooled down there would be an absence of all 
 life. Whence did the life come, with which the 
 world now teems ? It may be said that matter 
 naturally or spontaneously produces life ; but 
 there is this great difficulty in the way, namely, 
 that there is no single experimental result which 
 at all favours the hypothesis ; nothing is more 
 remarkable and more constant than \\\^ law, 
 that life of all kinds proceeds from something 
 living. It seems difficult therefore to under- 
 stand how there could be a beo^innins^ of life 
 without something supernatural ; if nature, ex- 
 amined with all the ingenuity and pertinacity 
 of modern science, refuses to afford an instance
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 31 
 
 of life in its origin, it seems a necessary con- 
 sequence that the origin should be superna- 
 tural: — I will not introduce the term miracu- 
 lous, but supernatural seems to express precisely 
 that which must have been. 
 
 But life came somehow : you have your pro- 
 toplasm and your protoplasmatic cells, which 
 develope into higher forms and generate plants 
 and animals and finally man. I am not going 
 to make any objection to Mr. Darwin's inge- 
 nious theories with regard to natural selection, 
 the survival of the fittest, and selection in rela- 
 tion to sex ; but I wish to impress upon you 
 this point, namely, that there is in all these 
 theories no real machinery (so to speak) for the 
 improvement or change of species or races : sup- 
 posing that you have got your improvement 
 there is a reason assigned why it should become 
 permanent, but no reason is assigned why it 
 should in the first instance occur ^. If, for ex- 
 ample, you have two sets of fowls which agree 
 in every point except that one set has developed 
 
 ^ See Mozley's Essays, vol. ii, p. 396. "Natural selection 
 is not an agent, but a result. . . . Natural selection only 
 weeds, and does not plant ; it is the drain of Nature carrying 
 off the irregularities, the monstrosities, the abortions ; it 
 comes in after and upon the active development of Nature 
 to prune and thin them ; but it does not create a species ; it 
 does not possess one productive or generative function."
 
 32 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 formidable spurs while the other has not, it is 
 quite intelligible that the spurred variety will 
 have the advantage over the unspurred, and 
 that the latter will die out while the former will 
 survive ; but this survival of the fittest, or of 
 the strongest, does not in the least degree 
 account for the development of the spurs ; the 
 cause for that must be sought elsewhere. 
 
 Take an illustration from the works of man. 
 If you visit the South Kensington Museum, you 
 may see with other curiosities the earliest form 
 of the locomotive engine ; it is strangely different 
 from those which we see upon our railways now ; 
 but the one has been developed out of the other 
 by successive improvements and by the survival 
 of the fittest. Let us see, however, what we mean, 
 in this human case which we can thoroughly 
 measure and understand, by development and 
 survival of the fittest. We mean that a number 
 of ingenious men have been constantly em- 
 ploying themselves to correct what has been 
 found amiss in the earlier locomotive forms : 
 whenever a real improvement has been devised, 
 it has been seized upon and made permanent ; 
 whenever a change has been proposed which has 
 been found not to answer, it has been permitted 
 to sink into oblivion. And thus our perfected 
 locomotive is a distinct result of gradual de-
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 33 
 
 velopment and survival of the fittest ; but it is 
 manifest that the power to which the improve- 
 ment is really due is that supplied by the brains 
 of the engineers, and is not anything inherent 
 in the first locomotive engine. Of course this 
 illustration does not at every point run parallel 
 with natural development; the human cannot 
 completely represent the divine ; but I think it 
 does clearly point out the confusion of thought, 
 which is involved in supposing that a selection 
 of the best and survival of the fittest supply 
 any explanation whatever of the power, by which 
 the development of improved forms is in reality 
 effected. 
 
 You will, of course, observe that in what has 
 now been said I am by no means denpng the 
 possibility, or even the probability, of evolution 
 of higher forms of life from lower : I have 
 already agreed to grant all that may be asked 
 in this direction : what I insist upon is that 
 the survival and perpetuation of a higher 
 form of life, when it has appeared, affords no 
 explanation whatever of the fact that it did 
 appear. Suppose it to be true that the beauty 
 of certain cock birds is to be accounted for by 
 the preference of hens for mates with brilliant 
 plumage ; this explanation manifestly only ac- 
 counts for the favour bestowed upon the bearers
 
 34 TUE OIIIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 of fine feathers, but docs not at all explain the 
 existence of those feathers. Or, to take the 
 highest example of all, supposing" man to have 
 been developed in the course of ages from some 
 ascidian ancestor; the development is quite as 
 miraculous in its character as the history, whicli 
 simply describes man as having been made out 
 of the dust. To regard it as a matter of chance 
 whether an original piece of protoplasm became 
 a man or a cabbage seems to me to be utterly 
 unphilosophical, to say the least ; and yet, unless 
 we adopt some such course, I do not see how 
 we can get rid of the conception of an intelli- 
 gent Creator. 
 
 But there is another difficulty in what Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel calls the non-miraculous theory of 
 creation. It seems that not only do creatures 
 rise from one level to a higher by the develop- 
 ment of new members and new powers, but also 
 the reverse process takes place : that is to say, 
 certain creatures have got rid of members and 
 powers which their ancestors possessed. Take 
 one example. Certain snakes have rudimentary 
 legs : these legs are of no use whatever ; they 
 merely exist as part of the skeleton, and are 
 not perceptible at all in the living animal. 
 We are told that the explanation of this curious 
 fact in natural history is to be found in the sup- 
 position, that the legless snake is the descendant
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 35 
 
 of ancestors who possessed legs. *' The different 
 stages of suppression and degeneration of these 
 organs," says Professor Haeckel, "are easily 
 accounted for in such of the descendants as 
 could not use them" (vol. i, p. 17). It cer- 
 tainly seems a tax upon our powers of belief, 
 when we are called upon to accept the hypo- 
 thesis of development towards perfection on the 
 one side, and of degeneration with loss of mem- 
 bers on the other. It seems difficult to suppose 
 that a creature would have been developed from 
 the original protoplasm up to the high level of 
 legs, and that then its descendants should have 
 found so little use for the legs w^hich it had re- 
 quired millions of years to evolve, that they 
 should have eventually disappeared altogether, 
 or rather disappeared as useful members, and 
 recorded their former existence in the curious 
 manner described. Perhaps it is still more 
 strange that certain animals should have got 
 rid of their eyes, as visual organs, in the same 
 manner. But I will grant the hypothesis of 
 degradation, and suppose that snakes represent 
 ancestors with legs ; only I ask^ is it to be be- 
 lieved that these creatures got rid of their legs 
 by a " non-miraculous" process ? There is some- 
 thing plausible, to say the leasts, in the notion of 
 creatures surviving which developed new mem^ 
 D %
 
 36 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 bers or new powers ; but it seems somewhat of 
 a tax upon our powers of belief, to require us 
 to suppose, that when animals began to sloug-h 
 off their members they still survived, and that 
 there was no power superintending* the trans- 
 formation beyond what may be called the force 
 of circumstances ! 
 
 You will observe that it is not the evolution 
 of high forms of life from simpler forms, which, 
 to my mind at least, presents any difficulty. 
 There is nothing in the abstract more mar- 
 vellous, or more difficult to believe, in the con- 
 ception of evolution than in that of the de- 
 velopment of a bird from a little spot in the 
 centre of an egg, or of a butterfly from a 
 caterpillar ; but the conclusion which I find it 
 impossible to accept is, that the whole sup[)osed 
 evolution of the living world, as we see it, out 
 of chaos was not the work of an infinite mind, 
 having some great purpose (I need not now 
 discuss what) in view. Yet this is the con- 
 clusion which Professor Haeckel wishes us to 
 accept, and which he presses with great earnest- 
 ness. " I maintain," he writes, " with regard 
 to the much-talked-of purpose in nature^ that it 
 really has no existence but for those persons 
 who observe phenomena in animals and plants 
 in the most superticial manner. Without goiug
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 37 
 
 more deeply into the matter^ we can see at once 
 that the rudimentary organs are a formidable 
 obstacle to this theory. And indeed every one 
 who makes a reallv close studv of the org-an- 
 isation and- mode of life of the various animals 
 and plants, and becomes familiar with the 
 reciprocity or inter-action of the phenomena of 
 life, and the so-called economy of nature^ must 
 necessarily come to the conclusion that this 
 jmrposiveness no more exists than the much- 
 talked-of leneficence of the Creator " (vol. i, 
 p. 19). 
 
 It seems therefore that any one who studies 
 natural history is, according to Prof. Haeckel, 
 unable to believe either in the purpose or in the 
 leneficence of a Creator. This is a very terrible 
 conclusion at which to arrive, and, thank God, 
 all students of natural history do not seem to 
 have adopted it. But it should be remarked 
 that it is just this kind of representation of the 
 results of the study of natural science, which 
 causes thoughtful and good men sometimes to 
 look upon science with suspicious, or more than 
 suspicious, eyes. It is not the mere question 
 of the possibility of putting a tenable inter- 
 pretation upon the first chapter of Genesis, but 
 it is the question whether we are living under 
 a good God for any good purpose. It seems
 
 So THE ORlCilN OF THE WORLD 
 
 to me not too much to say, that if it were 
 generally held that the inevitable result of 
 the progress of science was to make it impos- 
 sible to believe in a wise and beneficent God, 
 the necessary tendency of our race would be 
 downwards, and that nothing would be able 
 to avert our ultimate moral ruin. If you 
 ask how it is that so clever a man as Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel should have propounded a view, 
 uhich I have ventured to represent as so 
 monstrous, I should reply in the first place 
 that a man may be a good observer of nature, 
 and yet not a philosopher — in fact, it is not 
 often that the two qualities of mind go to- 
 gether. But in the second place, and chiefly, 
 I think it is not difficult to perceive in what 
 manner Professor Haeckel has gone wrong. He 
 sees certain things which he cannot reconcile 
 with the idea of purpose, and certain things 
 which he cannot reconcile with the idea of 
 beneficence ; and he rushes to the conclusion 
 that there is no purpose and no beneficence, 
 instead of adopting the safer and wiser con- 
 clusion that the system of the world is one only 
 partially understood, and that there are anoma- 
 lies which would cease to be anomalies if our 
 vision was more perfect than it is. 
 
 If you wish to know the really philosophical
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 39 
 
 view of the difRculties connected with the hypo- 
 thesis of a wise and good Creator, I should 
 refer you to Bishop Butler's Analogy^ ; but I will 
 quote here a short passag-e from a writer of a 
 very different kind, one whom I think that 
 Professor Haeckel would himself respect, be- 
 cause he is a careful and conscientious student 
 of natural history — I mean Sir John Lubbock. 
 In a lecture on " Plants and Insects " he dis- 
 cusses, amongst other things, the colour and 
 marking of caterpillars; he gives ingenious 
 reasons by way of accounting for some of the 
 peculiarities of these humble members of the 
 living family, and he concludes his lecture with 
 these words: — "Here then, I think, we see 
 reasons for many, at any rate, of the variations 
 of colour and markings in caterpillars, which 
 at first sight seem so fantastic and intxplicable. 
 I should, however, produce an impression very 
 different from that which I wish to convey, 
 were I to lead you to suppose that all these 
 varieties have been explained, or are understood. 
 Far from it; they still offer a large field for 
 study; nevertheless I venture to think that the 
 evidence now brought forward, however imper- 
 
 * See Part I, chap, vii : " Of the Government of God, con- 
 sidered as a scheme or constitution, imperfectly compre- 
 hended."
 
 40 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 fectly, is at least sufficient to justify the con- 
 elusion, that there is not a hair or a line, not 
 a spot or a colour, for which there is not a 
 reason — which has not a purpose or a meaning 
 in the economy of nature ^" 
 
 You see that we shall not have all the 
 students of nature against us, if we venture to 
 believe that there is such a thing as purpose, 
 even in the humblest department of the world 
 in which we live. I have said, in order to 
 partially ward off the tremendous assertion of 
 Professor Haeckel concerning the impossibility 
 of believing in piirjpose and beneficence, that ob- 
 servers of nature are not always philosophers. 
 It seems to me so important that you should 
 be assisted in setting at their proper value the 
 sweeping assertions, which are sometimes made 
 by men of whom Ernst Haeckel is a type, that 
 I shall offer you, before leaving his book, a few 
 remarks intended to show that he at least is 
 not a trustworthy guide, when dealing with the 
 philosophy of his subject. 
 
 These remarks will be based upon the com- 
 parison which the Professor draws, between Mr. 
 Darwin's Theory of Descent and Newton's 
 Theory of Gravitation. Listen to the follow- 
 ing passage. 
 
 ^ Scientific Lectures, p. 66.
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 41 
 
 " Let US call to mind that theory which has 
 ranked up to the present time as the greatest 
 achievement of the human mind, the Theory of 
 Gravitation, which Newton, two hundred years 
 ago, established in his ' Mathematical Principles 
 of Natural Philosophy.' Here we find that the 
 object to be explained is as large as one can well 
 imagine. He undertook to reduce the pheno- 
 mena of the motion of the planets and the 
 structure of the universe to mathematical laws. 
 As the most simple cause of these intricate 
 phenomena of motion Newton established the 
 law of weight or attraction; the same law which 
 is the cause of the fall of bodies, of adhesion, 
 cohesion, and many other phenomena ^. 
 
 ''If we apply the same standard of valuation 
 to Darwin's Theory, we must arrive at the con- 
 clusion that this theory, also, is one of the 
 greatest achievements of the human mind, and 
 that it may be placed quite on a level with 
 Newton's Theory of Gravitation, &c., &c." (vol. i, 
 
 P- 25). 
 
 I confess that my own belief is that Mr. 
 Darwin would himself be the first to repudiate 
 this estimate of his Theory of Descent ; but any- 
 how, without any desire to speak slightingly 
 
 ^ The language of this last sentence seems to me loose, 
 if not incorrect ; but I need not criticize it.
 
 42 THE ORIGIN OF THE WOKLD 
 
 of Mr. Darwin's powers and achievements, which 
 every reasonable man mll!^t rate xery hii^hly, I 
 should like to put before you, if I may and can, 
 in a condensed form, what is meant by Newton's 
 having: established the law of o-vavitation, so 
 that you may be able to judg-e for yourselve-; 
 whether there is any qround for speakinii: of 
 Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of Descent as bein^" 
 an established Theory, in the Fame sense that 
 Newton's hypothesis of Gravitation is unques- 
 tionably an established Theory. 
 
 Newton speculated that the force which ke})t 
 the moon in its orbit was the identical force of 
 attraction which causes a stone to fall to the 
 ground. Other scientific men had speculated in 
 the same direction ; the difference between 
 Newton and them was, that Newton proved 
 his speculation to be true. He proved it thus. 
 When a body moves in a circle round a centre 
 of force, as for example when a stone tied to a 
 string" moves at a certain rate round the point to 
 which the other end of the string is fastened, 
 the force which acts upon the stone depends upon 
 the length of the string and the rate of motion. 
 This is a mathematical proposition concerning 
 which there is no doubt whatever. Consequently, 
 if the moon moves round the earth in a circle, at 
 a certain distance from the earth, and at a
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 43 
 
 certain rate, (as she approximately does,) and if 
 we know the distance and the rate, we know 
 the amount of force which is acting upon the 
 moon. Whatever be the cause or origin of that 
 force, the amount of it is a simple geometrical 
 result from the actual motion. Consequently 
 Newton knew the exact amount of force acting 
 on the moon. Then also he knew the amount 
 of force w^hich the earth can exercise at its sur- 
 face, by observing the distance through which 
 a stone will fall in a second. He made the 
 hypothesis that this force decreased as the square 
 of the distance from the earth^s centre increased ; 
 in other words, that if at a given distance from 
 the earth's centre the attractive force was 
 measured by i, then at twice the distance it 
 must be measured by 5, at three times the dis- 
 tance by J, and so on. This was pure hypo- 
 thesis ; but you will perceive that knowing the 
 moon's distance, and knowing the earth's force 
 of attraction at its surface, or at about 4000 
 miles from the centre, he could calculate what 
 the force ov.ght to be upon the moon, if his 
 hypothesis w^as correct. He also knew, as al- 
 ready explained, w^hat the force actually was 
 from the known distance and rate of motion 
 of the moon. Would the values of the force 
 deduced by these two entirely diflPerent methods
 
 44 THE OEIGIX OF THE WORLD 
 
 agree ? He made the calculation, and found tliat 
 they aciuall}' did agree. 
 
 Having ohtained this great result. Newton 
 applied his principles to explain the various 
 irregularities or errors, as they are technically 
 called, in the moon's motion. Every additional 
 step confirmed the correctness of his hypothesis; 
 and the completion of the theory was effected 
 when, by means of improved methods of mathe- 
 matical calculation, the great French mathema- 
 ticians Laplace and Lagrange reduced the entire 
 motion of the planetary system to the most ac- 
 curate investigation. Every successive problem 
 confirmed Newton's original proposition ; and the 
 topstone was put to the edifice in our own times 
 by the discovery of a new planet, not through 
 the power of the telescope, but in consequence 
 of the disturbance produced upon its next door 
 neighbour by that planet, the cause being traced 
 home to the unseen offender by the Theory of 
 Universal Gravitation. 
 
 To speak of the Theory of Gravitation, to 
 the nature of which I have thus briefly called 
 your attention, and of the Theory of Descent^ as 
 two things to be placed on the same level seems 
 to me to be most misleading. The Theory of 
 Gravitation is undoubtedy one which can never 
 be shaken, and which will never require amend-
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 45 
 
 ment ; the mind which rejects it may be, with- 
 out want of charity, described as incapable of 
 appreciating reasoning- ; it is safe to assert, that 
 there is no competent person throughout the 
 whole world who does or ever will venture to 
 question it. But how can such propositions be 
 maintained concerning the Doctrine of Descent, 
 — at all events as expounded by Professor 
 Haeckel? Do all observed facts fall into their 
 places according to that doctrine ? Are there no 
 unexplained phenomena ? Does every one in the 
 presence of that doctrine feel himself under an 
 intellectual necessity of abandoning the thought 
 oijpurjpose and henejicence ? 
 
 At this stage of my lecture I had intended 
 to lay down the volumes to which I have 
 been for some time directing your attention ; 
 but, if you will not consider me wearisome, I 
 should like to bring under your notice just one 
 more point, which, as it seems to me, ought not 
 to be omitted, if we would fairly compare the 
 kind of science which those volumes contain 
 with that to which we have been accustomed in 
 the school of Newton. 
 
 Professor Haeckel gives us in the second 
 volume of his " History of Creation" a complete 
 pedigree of Man. The stages are as follows : — 
 
 I. Monera^ which are described as " simple
 
 46 THE OiUGlX OF THE WORLD 
 
 homogeneous, structureless, and formless little 
 lumps of mucus or albuminous matter." These 
 are supposed to have originated by spontaneous 
 generation. 
 
 2. AmoehcB ; these are simple cells, that is, 
 " a little piece of protoplasm enclosing a kernel." 
 
 3. Synamcshm^ or a collection of Amoebie. 
 " They originated out of the single-celled 
 primeval animals of the second stage by re- 
 peated self-division, and by the permanent 
 union of the products of this division/' 
 
 4. Tlatmada, 
 
 5. GasfrcBafla, or primaeval "stomach animals." 
 
 6. Turhellaria, or worms of a very simple 
 kind. 
 
 7. Scolecida, or worms of a higher class. 
 
 8. Himatega^ or worms of a higher class still. 
 The preceding are the invertebrate ancestors 
 
 of man ; now w^e come to the vertebrate. 
 
 9. Acrania, or skull-less animals. 
 
 10. Monorrliina, or single-nostrilled animals. 
 
 11. Seidell li^ or primaeval fish. 
 
 12. L'qmeusta, or mud-fish. 
 
 13. Sozohranchia, or gilled amphibians. 
 Here be^an the five-toed formation of the 
 
 foot. 
 
 14. Sozura, or tailed amphibians. 
 J 5. Protamnia.
 
 ACCOEDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 47 
 
 1 6. Prima/'?/ Mammals. 
 
 17. Pouc/ied amma\s. 
 
 18. PrGsimicB^ or semi-apes. 
 
 19. Tailed Aj)es, 
 
 20. Manlike Apes. 
 
 21. Apelike Men, 
 
 22. Men. 
 
 Now I am not going to find fault with this 
 pedigree, except so far as it represents the trans- 
 formation of a little piece of spontaneously 
 generated protoplasm into a man, as having 
 taken place without any external creative power 
 or purpose ; but I wish, granting all that it 
 may be necessary to grant with respect to the 
 possibility of evolution, to call your attention to 
 the following feature in Professor Haeekel's 
 treatment of his subject. 
 
 *' For many and weighty reasons/' he writes, 
 " we hold the monophyletic hypothesis to be the 
 most correct, and we therefore assume a single 
 primceval home for mankind, where he developed 
 out of a long since extinct anthropoid species 
 of ape" (vol. ii, p- 325). Where could this 
 primaeval home be? "We as yet know of no 
 fossil remains of the hypothetical primaeval 
 man." Will it be believed that the Professor 
 actually invents a continent, which he calls 
 Lemuria ; and in the map of the \\ orld which
 
 48 THE ORIGIN OF THE WOKLD 
 
 forms the frontii^plece to his second volume, wo 
 find Lemnria connecting* Africa with Asia, and 
 upon it a spot marked Paradise^ with a very 
 necessary note of interrojji'ation attached to it. 
 
 Pray observe that I do not deny the possible 
 existence in past ages of a continent connecting- 
 Africa and Asia ; there is nothing incredible in 
 such a supposition ; and undoubtedly enormous 
 changes of land and water have taken place in 
 jreolosrical time : but to introduce a creature 
 described as having a very long skull, with 
 slanting teeth, hair woolly, colour of skin dark 
 and of a brownish tint, hair cov^ering the whole 
 body, arms comparatively longer and stronger 
 than our own, legs on the other hand knock- 
 kneed shorter and thinner, with entirely unde- 
 veloped calves, walking only half erect — to intro- 
 duce a confessedly hypothetical creature of this 
 kind, and then invent a continent upon which 
 he may be supposed to have lived, is certainly 
 science of a very different kind from that which 
 Newton gave to the world. When I read this 
 loose admixture of conjecture and hypothesis 
 and observation, I cannot but recall the story of 
 Newton in connection with his verification of 
 his hypothesis concerning gravitation. I re- 
 minded you just now how it was that Newton 
 verified his hypothesis, but I did not remind
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 49 
 
 you that when he first made the calculation the 
 result was unfavourable. This was in the year 
 1665. He accordingly put his hypothesis on 
 one side, as not being accordant with fact. In 
 the year 1682 — no less than seventeen years 
 afterwards — he was attending a meeting of the 
 Royal Society, at which a new measurement of 
 a degree of the meridian, executed by M. Picard 
 in 1679, became the subject of discussion. 
 Newton made a memorandum of the result of 
 the French astronomer's measurement, and 
 having deduced from it the diameter of the 
 earth, he resumed his calculations of 1665. In 
 the progress of his work with the new data he 
 saw that the expected result, which he had be- 
 fore failed to obtain, was likely now to be 
 realised ; and he was thrown into such a state 
 of nervous irritability that he was unable to 
 carry on his calculation, which was accordingly 
 handed over to one of his friends to be com- 
 pleted. His patience and perseverance were, as 
 I have already said, and as we all know, crowned 
 with complete success ^. 
 
 III. But the progress of time warns me that 
 I must be thinking of bringing my lecture to a 
 close. 
 
 * Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Neivton, p. 152.
 
 50 THE ORIGIN OP THE WORLD 
 
 I said in a former part of it that, after having* 
 spoken of the " History of Creation according 
 to Moses," and of the " History of Creation ac- 
 cording to Professor Ernst Haeckel," I should 
 make such observations as might arise from 
 a comparison of the two. I now proceed to 
 do this. 
 
 The first remark which I have to make is 
 very obvious, but also very important, namely, 
 that the basis of the History of Creation accord- 
 ing to Moses, and that of every scientific effort 
 to trace out the early history of our globe, are 
 essentially different, the one from the other. 
 One is moral and the other physical. The 
 purpose of the opening chapters of Holy Scrip- 
 ture is to assure us that we were made in the 
 image of God, that we differ essentially from 
 all other creatures, that we are placed here in a 
 condition of trial or moral probation. I am not 
 now saying whether this is the true view of man's 
 condition or not ; but I say that every one who 
 reads the first two or three chapters of the Book 
 of Genesis must confess that the promulgation 
 of this view is undeniably the purpose of those 
 chapters. "Whereas on the other hand natural 
 science has nothing whatever to do with the 
 moral condition of man : natural science, so far 
 as it deals with past history, has for its purpose
 
 ACCORDING TO HEVELATIOX AND SCIENCE. 51 
 
 the determination of what has been from what 
 is : and it is probable that scientific investiga- 
 tion will teach us much more in this direction 
 than we know at present. I should like to 
 indicate in a few words one or two points 
 upon which science has already thrown some 
 light. 
 
 Geology, as every one knows, has taught 
 us much concerning the history of the past, 
 and is yearly teaching us more. It reveals 
 beyond all doubt a vast antiquity as belonging 
 to our globe : it shews too that notwithstanding 
 the great increase of the time which recent in- 
 vestigations assign to the existence of man, 
 as compared with that which was assigned 
 by scientific men not long ago, nevertheless 
 after all man is, geologically speaking, a re- 
 cent inhabitant of the earth. But geology 
 in framing its conclusions is compelled to take 
 into account the teachings of other sciences. 
 If we felt disposed to give an indefinite amount 
 of time for the evolution of cosmos out of chaos, 
 as has sometimes been thought possible, the 
 student of heat and mechanics comes in, and 
 asserts upon the authority of his branch of 
 science, that a limit must be put to the time 
 available for the bringing about the present 
 condition of things : he will grant from 
 £ %
 
 52 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 ico,ooo,ooo to 3c0.000.000 of years, as tlie 
 extreme allowance of time : if sreoloaists cannot 
 be content with this allowance, a distinguished 
 professor has said " so much the worse for 
 geologists, for more they cannot have ^" 
 
 But perhaps the most remarkable knowledge 
 which we have concerning the primitive con- 
 dition of our globe, is that which is derived 
 from the investigation of the form of the earth, 
 regarded as having been originally in a fluid 
 condition. Few problems have given occasion 
 for a more refined application of mathematical 
 skill than this. I wish I could convey to you 
 even the slightest conception of the beauty of 
 the method by which the solution of the pro- 
 blem has been effected, so far as it has been 
 effected : it must suffice to say, that, with very 
 little of arbitrary assumption indeed, it has been 
 proved that the form of the earth, regarded as a 
 mass of fluid revolving at the rate at which the 
 earth does actually revolve, would be precisely 
 that which the earth possesses, that is, a nearly 
 spherical body, flattened at the poles to the 
 exact extent to which the earth is flattened ^. 
 
 ^ Professor Tait. "Lectures on some Recent Advances 
 in Physical Science." 
 
 * I do not know that it is desirable in a note to a popular 
 lecture to refer to mathematical treatises, but I will just
 
 ACCOEDIXG TO EEYELATIOX AXD SCIENCE. 53 
 
 The coincidence is so remarkable that we may 
 assert with considerable confidence that the 
 earth was originally fluid and has cooled down ; 
 I have already noticed the difl[iculty which such 
 a supposition throws in the way of any spon- 
 taneous origin of life : but upon that I do not 
 care to dwell now : the origin of life is a 
 mystery, take it which way you will. 
 
 Go back however as you may in the history 
 of creation, you come, sooner or later, to a limit 
 beyond which no amount of research will carry 
 you ; partly perhaps because you have not the 
 elements of fact which are necessary for the 
 conduct of the inquiry, partly because the pro- 
 blem to be solved essentially transcends the 
 powers of the human mind. There are many 
 things which you certainly know must have 
 been, and yet you cannot conceive how. The 
 origin of life is one of these things. Professor 
 Tyndall has told us that he sees in matter 
 itself " the potency of all terrestrial life.'"' Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel regards the doctrine of descent 
 as the solution of all difficulties. I have un- 
 feigned respect for the abilities of both of these 
 eminent men ; but I confess that after every 
 effort of mind that I have been able to make 
 
 mention Pratt's Treatise on Attractions, Laplace's Functions, 
 and the Figure of the Earth." (Macmillan and Co.)
 
 54 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 I have been unable to follow them in these 
 conclusions. If matter be that which I under- 
 stand by the term, it is to me absolutely in- 
 credible that there should be evolved out of it 
 by any inherent potency beings capable of love, 
 truth, faith, religion, and so forth. Yet this is 
 the kind of being* for whose existence we have 
 to give an account, if we are going to establish 
 anything wbich can deserve the name of a theory 
 of Creation. I am not merely called upon to 
 believe that the beauty of the vegetable king- 
 dom, and the sweet concert of birds, and the 
 sagacity of the ant, and the geometrical genius 
 of the bee were evolved from matter by an in- 
 herent potency, but that I myself, — I who am 
 conscious of personality, who am capable of 
 discussing with you such solemn subjects as 
 that with which I have been dealing this even- 
 ing*, I who can at least believe that I believe in 
 a " Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
 earth," and who can at least dream of an im- 
 mortality in which I shall be permitted to 
 realize my Maker's presence, — that I, being 
 such as I feel and know myself to be, am after 
 all not essentially different from my dog, or 
 even from the grass which I trample under 
 my feet. 
 
 And as for the banishment of all conception
 
 ACCOKDING TO BEVELATION AND SCIENCE. 55 
 
 of purpose and beneficence from creation, which 
 Professor Haeckel seems to regard as such a 
 triumph of science, I confess that not my heart 
 only but my most thoughtful convictions rebel. 
 I cannot bring my mind to conceive of the 
 actual non-existence of a Creator ; and, admit- 
 ting the existence of a Creator, I am constrained 
 to believe that He is both intelligent and good. 
 
 I do not say that I can account for every- 
 thing that exists ; I am far from being able to 
 do that ; but I can see so much of purpose in 
 many things that I can easily believe that pur- 
 pose is the guiding rule of creation. And I 
 may not be able to reconcile all that I see with 
 my own conception of perfect goodness; but I 
 can perceive enough of beneficence in the ar- 
 rangement of the world, to say nothing of deep- 
 lying convictions which are independent of ex- 
 perience, to be able to believe that another 
 guiding rule of creation is beneficence, and that 
 phenomena which seem to contradict this view 
 may fairly be left to the class of unexplained 
 anomalies. 
 
 Therefore I cannot subscribe to Professor 
 Haeckel's view of Creation, and I cannot 
 advise you to adopt it. The view which 
 commends itself to my mind as most reason- 
 able I should express somewhat as follows.
 
 56 THE ORIGIN OF THE WOELD 
 
 The present material universe appears to me 
 to be the outcome of an infinite mind. The 
 phrase ivfinite mind is, of course, not a purely 
 scientific term, and would be of no value in any 
 attempt to give a scientific account of Creation : 
 but what I mean by the term may be explained 
 thus. I have a knowledge of what mind is from 
 reflecting" upon my own powers and those of my 
 fellow-men. The mind exercises its powers in 
 the case of a man through the instrumentality 
 of the brain : but I can conceive of mind as 
 apart from brain : and that power of thought, 
 of purpose, of intention, which a man can exer- 
 cise in a limited degree, I can conceive as exist- 
 ing in an unlimited degree. There are many 
 arguments which lead me to think that there 
 is in fact a Being, who does possess to an 
 absolutely unlimited extent those powers which 
 I am conscious of being able in a limited degree 
 to exercise myself, and that my limited mind is 
 an inspiration from His. I adopt the existence 
 of this infinite Being, therefore, as what I may 
 call the great human hypothesis. You may deny 
 it, if you please ; but you will find that there is 
 a great deal to be said for it, both on moral and 
 philosophical grounds. So far, however, as we 
 are concerned just now, what I wish to press 
 upon you is that the hypothesis really commends
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 57 
 
 itself to us by its extreme simplicity and by its 
 comprehensiveness. If I believe in one God 
 the Maker of heaven and earth, then the 
 scientific investigration of Creation and nature 
 is as simple and open to me as it is to one who 
 denies my hypothesis ; while I have this great 
 advantage over the Atheistic student, namely, 
 that the universe presents to me a field for 
 moral inquiry as well as one for scientific in- 
 vestigation. I find insoluble mysteries no doubt, 
 — perhaps he does the same ; but anyhow when 
 I do come across a mystery, I am able to say 
 that it is just what I should have expected to 
 find in a universe representing the thoughts of 
 a mind, which by hypothesis is infinitely above 
 my own. 
 
 For, finally, to one who believes in the being 
 of a God, who may also be described as an 
 Almighty Father, it is impossible for a moment 
 to leave out of view the grand purpose, for which 
 we men exist upon this earth which God has 
 made. Purpose! Ernst Haeckel tells us that 
 there is no purpose in Creation, because there are 
 some things which his investigations will not 
 explain. 
 
 I think that any one w^ho has studied the 
 mechanism of the eye, who has kept com- 
 pany with the ant or the bee^ who remem-
 
 58 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD 
 
 bers how almost day by day science brings to 
 light ingenious contrivances, which have been 
 performing their functions in the economy 
 of the world from the beginning, but which 
 human skill has only in these latter days de- 
 tected in their beneficent operation, would be a 
 bold man if he denied the existence of purpose, 
 even in cases where the hypothesis of purpose 
 might seem at first sight to fail : but when we 
 speak of purpose in its highest sense, we put on 
 one side the thought of ingenious contrivance 
 and subtle combinations of machinery, and the 
 adaptation of material means to material ends. 
 We rise to the height of the great argument of 
 the purpose of man himself. We hear much 
 about the heginning of man ; but what is his 
 end? Surely it is not irrational to suppose 
 that he has been placed here in a condition of 
 trial, and that he is ©n his way to a better 
 country ! 
 
 I am not to preach a sermon to you this even- 
 ing, and therefore I do not enlarge upon this 
 topic ; but I say that the History of Creation 
 which represents man as created in the image 
 of God, as placed here in a state of proba- 
 tion, and as having mighty issues dependent 
 upon his conduct, in no way conflicts with 
 science, is more reasonable and probable than
 
 ACCORDING TO REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 59 
 
 any other whicli has been yet propounded, is the 
 safest foundation upon which to build a social 
 system or a scheme of human government, and 
 is the only one answering in any adequate 
 manner to those aspirations and instincts, which 
 are facts of humanity, and which belong to phi- 
 losopher and to peasant alike. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CLARENDON PEESS, OXFORD. 
 
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