[Footnote 1: In the Introduction to his well-known book, "Natural Law in
the Spiritual World."]
Religionists, on the other hand, imagining, however wrongly, that the
erroneous extension was part of the true scientific doctrine, attacked
the whole without discrimination.
While such a misapprehension existed, it was inevitable that writers
anxious alike for the dignity of science and the maintenance of
religion, should step in to point out the error, and effect a
reconciliation of claims which really were never in conflict.
It is hardly the fault of "religionists" that it was at first supposed
that one _could_ not hold the doctrine of evolution without denying a
"special" creation and a designing Providence. It was on this very
natural supposition that the first leading attack--attributed to the
Bishop of Oxford--proceeded. And the writer fell into the equally
natural mistake of taking advantage of the uncompleted and unproved
state of the theory at the time, to attack the theory itself, instead of
keeping to the safer ground, namely, that whatever might ultimately be
the conclusion of evolutionists, it was quite certain that no theory of
evolution that at all coincided with the known facts, offered any ground
for argument against the existence of an Intelligent Lawgiver and First
Cause of all; nor did it tend in the slightest to show that no such
thing as creative design and providence existed in the course of nature.
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