What the discovery of evolution really did, was to necessitate a
revision of the hitherto popularly accepted and generally assumed and
unquestioned notion of what _creation_ was. And it has long appeared to
me, that while now the most thoroughgoing advocates of evolution
generally admit that their justly cherished doctrine has nothing to say
to the existence of a Creator, or to the possibility of design--which
may be accepted or denied on other grounds--the writers on the side of
Christianity have not sufficiently recognized the change which their
views ought to undergo.
As long as this is the case, there will continue to be a certain
"conflict," not indeed between science and religion, but of the kind
which has been vividly depicted by the late Dr. Draper.
It can scarcely have escaped the notice of the most ordinary reader
that, in the course of that interesting work, the author has very little
to say about religion--at any rate about religion in any proper sense of
the term. The conflict was between a Church which had a zeal for God
without knowledge, and the progress of scientific thought; it was also a
conflict between discovered facts, and facts which existed, not in the
Bible, but in a particular interpretation, however generally received,
of it.
The present work is therefore addressed primarily to Christian believers
who still remain perplexed as to what they ought to believe; and its aim
is to prevent, if may be, an unreasonable alarm at, and a useless
opposition to, the conclusions of modern science; while, at the same
time, it tells them in simple language how far those conclusions really
go, and how very groundless is the fear that they will ever subvert a
true faith that, antecedent to the most wonderful chain of causation and
methodical working which science can establish, there is still a Divine
Designer--One who upholds all things "by the word of His power.
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