Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/571

Rh the close of his article he has the following contemptuous reference to this point: "We are not going to argue here the truth or falsehood of the unverified and unverifiable hypothesis which is palmed upon us in the name of science." Still, we think that the question of "truth or falsehood" in so important a case is one that might well have been settled first. If the theory of evolution, as the writer declares, "has been reached in utter defiance of the canons of scientific method," it would have been well to show this at the outset. Besides, if the doctrine is an imposture, "which is palmed upon us in the name of science," it would be interesting to have it pointed out by what extraordinary hocus-pocus the scientific men of the present age have been imposed upon in accepting it.

To us the chief interest of Mr. Beecher's position, assumed in his recent books, is as a register of the rising influence and increasing power of scientific ideas and the corresponding decline of theological authority. He has passed far beyond the stage in which he asks first whether new ideas agree with old creeds. Although a professed theologian, he has so thoroughly entered into the spirit and method of modern science as to recognize that the supreme question in this case is whether the doctrine of evolution is an expression of the truth of nature. Mr. Beecher has by no means repudiated theology, but he has taken the great step of subordinating it to the standards of truth established by investigation and the study of the order and economy of the existing world. The old notion of two sets or systems of truth, one of which has claims of a special sacredness and superiority, while the other is profane, secular, and of merely human origin, and therefore of inferior rank, we understand him to repudiate. He finds the sacredness of authority in the truth itself, and none the less because man discovers and establishes it by his own faculties. Mr. Beecher, therefore, represents in an eminent way that vast change or revolution of modern thought which gives a higher value and a nobler significance to the study of nature and the revelation of the truths of nature. Nor in thus giving his highest allegiance to natural truth as disclosed by the workings of the human mind can he be said to have rejected religion or left the religious sphere. Holding firmly to theism, he simply maintains that the truth and order and harmony of nature are the highest manifestations of the attributes of God.

Mr. Beecher reconstructs the old theology, rejecting large portions of it which have formerly been held as essential, and reshaping what remains so as to bring it into better agreement with modern scientific ideas. As an honest and conscientious man he found no escape from entering upon this work. Only as an indifferentist, or a trifler, or a theologian enslaved to his traditions, could he recognize the great changes wrought by modern science, without any concern for those readjustments of human belief which have become inevitable. His book is full of evidences of that sincerity and earnestness of feeling upon the subject which have impelled him to undertake the task of working out the religious bearings of the doctrine of evolution. He saw that it had taken root in the best intelligence of the civilized world. There was no blinking or evasion of the facts that had to be met. The strong men of all nations who give their lives to the study of nature, the devotees of research, and the investigators of original truth in all departments of natural phenomena had come to agreement over this great principle with a rapidity and a unanimity such as has never before been seen in the history of science. There had been a vast accumulation of observations, facts, and principles in every department of research which defied explication and organization until the law of evolution was grasped and applied to them, and,