Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - Darwin and the Theory of Evolution.djvu/31

 28 and the field was left to the religious group. But they, too, found themselves in difficulty. Not a few of the older, and therefore more reactionary theologians went the way of the older and more reactionary naturalists. They were replaced by younger men who, in spite of their training, were somewhat tolerant of the new ideas of the century. Not a few of them even possessed some knowledge of biology, so they set about the process of reconciling what they believed with what they, or their betters, knew. This was not extremely difficult; the old doctrine of theology was ready and, with a little remodeling, applied excellently. Evolution ceased to be a contradiction of God, and became merely his way of doing things. What Darwin himself thought of this idea, and the unreasoning dogmatisms to which it often leads, is shown in a later chapter, Darwin and the Gods.

There were, of course, plenty of irreconcilables. The Catholic Church would make no compromise with fact, when that fact in any way detracted from the finality of Catholic dogma. Other sects, without the power and dignity of the Church of Rome possessed even more virile enthusiasm for ancient creeds and writings of doubtful authority. Captain FitzRoy was not the only one who insisted on the authority of "The Book"; his cry was taken up by the majority of the Protestant sects. The leaders of this group, being as ignorant of evolution as was the Bishop of Oxford, did not hesitate to ascribe to that theory all manner of properties and implications which it did not possess. Indeed, it furnished them with a