Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/255

Rh be, and that we shall have to consider afterward, to the teachings of revelation. Why, then, should religious men, independently of its relation to revelation, shrink from it, as very many unquestionably do? The reason is that, while this doctrine leaves the truth of the existence and supremacy of God exactly where it was, it cuts away, or appears to cut away, some of the main arguments for that truth.

Now, in regard to the arguments whereby we have been accustomed to prove or to corroborate the existence of a Supreme Being, it is plain that, to take these arguments away, or to make it impossible to use them, is not to disprove or take away the truth itself. We find every day instances of men resting their faith in a truth on some grounds which we know to be untenable, and we see what a terrible trial it sometimes is when they find out that this is so, and know not as yet on what other ground they are to take their stand. And some men succumb in the trial, and lose their faith, together with the argument which has hitherto supported it. But the truth still stands, in spite of the failure of some to keep their belief in it, and in spite of the impossibility of supporting it by the old arguments.

And, when men have become accustomed to rest their belief on new grounds, the loss of the old arguments is never found to be a very serious matter. Belief in revelation has been shaken again and again by this very increase of knowledge. It was unquestionably a dreadful blow to many in the days of Galileo to find that the language of the Bible in regard to the movement of the earth and sun was not scientifically correct. It was a dreadful blow to many in the days of the Reformation to find that they had been misled by what they believed to be an infallible Church.

Such shocks to faith try the mettle of men's moral and spiritual convictions, and they-often refuse altogether to hold what they can no longer establish by the arguments which have hitherto been to them the decisive, perhaps the sole decisive, proofs.

And yet, in spite of these shocks, belief in revelation is strong still in men's souls, and is clearly not yet going to quit the world.

But let us go on to consider how far it is true that the arguments which have hitherto been regarded as proving the existence of a Supreme Creator are really affected very gravely by this doctrine of evolution.

The main argument, which at first appears to be thus set aside, is that which is founded on the marks of design, and which is worked out in his own way with marvelous skill by Paley in his "Natural Theology." Paley's argument rests, as is well known, on the evidence of design in created things, and these evidences he chiefly finds in the framework of organized living creatures. He traces with much most interesting detail the many marvelous contrivances by which animals of various kinds are adapted to the circumstances in which they are to live, the mechanism which enables them to obtain their food, to