Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/72

 everyday experience, is at variance with an everyday axiom—the axiom that each faculty is strengthened by the exercise of it—intellectual power by intellectual action, and moral power by moral action.

What can this mean but that Spencer saw, at least dimly, the radical difference between the intellectual and the spiritual faculties?

The logic of all these facts and principles makes only one conclusion possible. When the man of scientific spirit approaches the Book which can reveal its truths to faith alone, he will not be unscientific enough to refuse faith to its statements and use his intellect alone. For he will see that the one who refuses the attitude of faith toward the Scriptures will be "ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth," while the one who accepts the Word in humble dependence on the Holy Spirit's interpretation of its meaning is on the one solitary highway by which a knowledge of the truth can be reached. When the Church and the Schools, therefore, agree on using this method of approach to the Word of God, they will at least have started toward the same goal.

2. The Spiritual Realm Must Be Given Primacy over the Natural.

Let us now see what it will mean to accord primacy to the spiritual realm over the natural.

There is only one possible method of doing this, and that is to interpret in the light of spiritual truth all the facts of the natural realm.

The man of scientific mind will therefore see clearly that he will be utterly incapable of giving such an