The scientific creed of a theologian

* MAR 12 1907 *

«

m 240 .S3513 1906
Ichmid, Rudolf, 1828-1907
The scientific creed of a
theologian

THE SCIENTIFIC CREED OF
A THEOLOGIAN

THE SCIENTIFIC CREED
OF A THEOLOGIAN

</?Y

RUDOLF SCHMID, D.D.

LATE COURT CHAPLAIN

TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION BY

J. W. STOUGHTON, B.A. (Camb.)

NEW YORK

A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON

3 & 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH ST

1906

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED

DEDICATED WITH GRATEFUL ESTEEM
TO THE

PROTESTANT THEOLOGICAL FACULTY
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN

(y)

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The immediate reason for undertaking the
present work, was the honour conferred upon
me by the reception of the degree of Doctor
of Divinity at the hands of the Protestant
Theological Faculty of the University of
Tübingen in the year 1897. I felt that *
ought to show my gratitude by way of some
literary production, but I could not embark
upon the work this involved until I had not
only retired from my official position, but
also given up many other duties connected
with it, and found time to follow up my read-
ing of some of the more recent and important
scientific works, for the study of which my
profession had not allowed me the necessary
leisure.

(vii)

viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

But this reason was accompanied by a
much deeper motive. Throughout my life the
boundaries of Natural Science and Theology
and Philosophy have been a favourite subject
of reflection. In the year 1876 when the
full stress of the intellectual movement started
by Darwin had reached its highest point, I
published a book entitled : The Theories of
Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy,
Religion and Morality. This was translated
into English by G. A. Zimmerman, Ph.D.,
with an introduction by the Duke of Argyll,
and published in America (Chicago ; Jansen,
MacClurg and Co., 1883).

It affords me no small satisfaction to see
that not only do the upholders of religion
more and more assume the same standpoint
to which I at that time adhered, but that
also in the past twenty-nine years Science has
taken the very path which I then anticipated.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION ix

I am not aware of anything I have said
in that book which I should now take
back, except some of my statements on the
relation of Science to the Biblical Record
of Creation. At that time I had studied the
Old Testament only for a brief period and
I had allowed myself to be guided by
August Dillmann's Commentary on Genesis.
The method thus adopted I have subsequently
abandoned.

The subject is indeed one of contemporary
interest. Book after book has been published
on these questions, but the standpoint I take
up is still characteristic, inasmuch as I de-
mand perfect freedom for Science, on the one
hand, and on the other adhere to the truths
of Christianity in their full extent. I have
also endeavoured not to shun any problems,
however knotty and difficult.

May this study not only aid readers on

x PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

either side to get the true bearings of the
questions at issue, but also help many who
may be troubled about the loud conflict be-
tween Science and Christianity, or Religion
and Culture, to find rest for their minds!

RUDOLF SCHMID.

Stuttgart.

CONTENTS

Introduction

PAGE

xiii

CHAPTER I
Creation as a Whole, Considered from the
Scientific and the Religious Point of
View T

CHAPTER II
The Conception of Creation as Recorded

in the Bible I5

CHAPTER III
Religion and the Scientific Record of

Creation 45

(xi)

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV

PAGE

Providence, Prayer and Miracles - - 172

CHAPTER V
The Person of Jesus Christ - - - 204

INTRODUCTION

Any one who undertakes to publish a plea
for an understanding between Science and
Christianity, will perhaps help his readers to
get their bearings best by first explaining
as briefly and definitely as possible the
standpoint which he takes up himself, and
from which he pursues his inquiry. Well,
the standpoint which during a long life I
have always taken up, and with which I
have always been well satisfied, is, briefly
put, that of absolute peace between the
two. Whether the two opposing factors,
whose peaceable solution now demands our
attention, be named Science and Theology,
or more generally embraced under the terms
Knowledge and Faith — a scientific and a
religious view of life — Modern Culture and

(xiii

xiv INTRODUCTION

Christian conviction — or (sharpest antithesis
of all) Causality and Teleology — what is
certain to my mind is the fact from which
I have always set out, which has always
led me to an absolutely harmonious solution,
viz., that the two factors cannot contradict
one another, because Truth can only be
One ; indeed that contradictions first emerge
where one or another of the two factors
oversteps its proper bounds.

Note, — For readers who are less intimate
with philosophical language, let me explain
that the term "Causality" means a view of
natural facts and occurrences which demands
Cause and Effect, whereas "Teleology" means
a view that demands End and Purpose (in
Nature). That which from the point of
view of Causality is Effect, becomes, from
the point of view of Teleology, Purpose and
Object ; that which from the point of Causality
is Cause, becomes, from the point of view
of Teleology, Means to an End. The word

INTRODUCTION xv

Causality comes from the Latin word " causa "
(''cause," Greek "aitia"), the word Teleology
from the Greek word "telos" (Latin "finis")
"end," not from "teleios" "perfect," as is
sometimes asserted. If we wish to use
foreign synonyms, then we must oppose
Causality to Finality or ^Etiology to Teleo-
logy. But in this instance current custom
has been stronger than logic. The opinion
expressed by Spinoza in the Appendix to
the first book of his Ethics, that the recog-
nition of causal connections in Nature would
eliminate the idea of purpose in Nature, has
of late, especially through Ernst Häckel's
popular scientific works, become a kind of
household word ; it is one of many signs
which serve to show that disciples of Science
themselves are not proof against catchwords
and their bias. Any one who wishes to
become more closely acquainted with this
question should consult the excellent treatise
"Der Kampf gegen den Zweck" ("The

xvi INTRODUCTION

Opposition to Design in Nature"), in
the second volume of the Kleinen Schriften
(Short Papers) von Christoph Sigzvart
(Akademische Buchhandlung von J. C. B.
Mohr, 2te Auflage, 1889).

This solution certainlysounds simple enough,
but as soon as it is applied in practice many
difficulties start up. In the first place, the
boundary between Christianity and Science is
very large. It embraces, in fact, everything
that falls within the sphere of natural know-
ledge. I can regard all the wealth of the
universe as a whole or in detail, both from
a scientific and from a religious point of
view, and each will have its claim to be
the Truth. But Truth can only be One.
There cannot be anything at once true from
a scientific point of view and at the same
time false from a religious point of view,
or vice versa. If I desire real satisfaction,
I cannot be at heart a Christian and with
my intellect an atheist. Nay, there must be

INTRODUCTION xvii

some adequate adjustment of the two points
of view. To prove that such an adjustment
is not only possible but also absolutely essential
to the enrichment and extension of both
standpoints, is the purpose of our present
study.

A further difficulty in this adjustment lies
in the fact that Christianity possesses docu-
mentary sources, namely The Holy Scriptures,
Now, we might perhaps imagine that all
possibilities of contradiction between the Bible
and Science would be removed once for all
by showing that the Bible neither is nor
seeks to be a Handbook of Natural Science,
but only claims to be the charter of our
salvation. The statement of this truth, which
is often forgotten but self-evident none the
less, may help to check superficial contro-
versy, but it is far from sufficient to allay
the difficulties which are aroused by an
attempt to understand the Scriptures in rela-
tion to the claims of Science. The Scriptures

b

xviii INTRODUCTION

in their present collected form, which has
lasted for the past fifteen hundred years,
have a still more distant origin which carries
us back past another fifteen hundred years.
In the very first chapters and the earliest
records of the Bible we meet with two
accounts of the Creation of the World, like
some magnificent portal to the Story of
God's Revelation to Man. The difference
between the conception of the world which
that far-off age possessed, as we see it
reflected in the Bible records of Creation,
and the conception by Modern Science, is
immense ; but it would be hasty to infer that
the Biblical record cannot now possess more
than a mere antiquarian interest. The em-
phasis laid upon the absolute causality of
the Creator in forming the world and all
that is therein, is of fundamental religious
interest, and lifts the Bible narrative far
above those records of other contemporary
nations which are in many ways so nearly

INTRODUCTION xix

related to them. Nay more. Even in the
details of the record — which, we are willing
to admit, has been coloured by a conception
of the world superseded by that of the
present day — there are statements which must
be reckoned as a permanent heritage of our
religious knowledge. These include the as-
sertion in the first Biblical narrative that Man
was made in the image of God, and also,
in the most pregnant of all allegories, the
enigmatic utterance concerning the relation
of Man and Woman and the essence, origin,
and consequences of sin, in the second
narrative. At what point, and in what
manner are the indispensable and transitory,
the kernel and the shell, to be separated,
without a break between my religious
and my scientific knowledge, or an in-
jury done to the former by the latter?
These are questions which also await a
solution.

Our Faith further possesses a series of

xx INTRODUCTION

facts which it cannot part with. Christianity
is not a mere theory ; it is not a view of
the world or a number of moral and religious
precepts ; its foundation is based on a series
of historical facts, especially on the Person,
Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now all the facts of history fall within the
province of scientific investigation, primarily
of historical research and secondarily, it may
be, of natural history ; so that the further
question arises : Do the historical facts on
which our Christian Faith rests bear the
test of such investigation ? Will not our
knowledge of these facts be affected by the
results of such researches, and, if so, is
not this modification an injury ? Or is it
really an enrichment of our religious in-
heritance ?

The points of possible contact between
Science and Religion must be put still more
closely. Any one who takes Religion and
Christianitv in earnest, views his entire life

INTRODUCTION xxi

from the standpoint of Divine Guidance.
Nay, a Christian goes further. He positively
asserts : " God is my Father and I am His
child" and he maintains a habitual attitude
of prayerful communion with his Heavenly
Father. How does Science look at this
conviction and habit ? Does it compel the
Christian to limit the hearing of prayer to
a purely psychological and subjective effect,
or does it allow him, in the ordinary course
of Nature, to enjoy an objective answer to
his prayers?

Finally, the chief cause of the breach
between Science and Christianity must be
alluded to, viz., the overstepping of bounds.
Both scientists and theologians have indulged
in this. Theologians overstep the limit when
they think that they are in a position to
restrict scientific investigation on the score
of Biblical assertions, as, for instance, in
prescribing the method scientists must pursue
and the results at which they must arrive.

xxii INTRODUCTION

The whole of the Middle Ages with its
theological dominion of the schools over the
sciences is a great organic instance of such
an error — which, with its theory of the
verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,
a theory utterly exploded at any rate on
Protestant territory, still casts its darkening
and bewildering shadows far over the modern
mind. Scientists overstep the limits when
they put the results of their researches at
the disposal of an anti-Christian view of the
world, or when they think the axiom of
Causality, according to which they prosecute
their inquiries, excludes that category of
Teleology which nevertheless meets them at
every turn and which finds in the universe
as a whole and in its manifold details so
magnificent a proof. Once we refuse to
overstep these limits, we shall find that the
acceptance of a Christian or an anti-Christian
view of the world is certainly not the result
of scientific research, but an act of personal

INTRODUCTION xxiii

choice, — and that just as the Christian view
of the world satisfies the soul far better than
does its rival, so also it presents far fewer
difficulties.

CHAPTER I

CREATION AS A WHOLE, CONSIDERED FROM THE
SCIENTIFIC AND THE RELIGIOUS POINT OF
VIEW

Before we consider any special department of
Nature where collisions might arise between
Science and Christianity, we must put ourselves
in the position of the scientist and try to see
things from his point of view : to see how the
world as a whole and in detail appears to him,
and how the Christian — or let us rather say, at
this preliminary stage of our inquiry, how the re-
ligious man regards the world from the theistic
standpoint.

We must make this last qualification, because
we do not wish to deny religious feeling altogether
to one who maintains an atheistic or pantheistic
standpoint ; but on the whole we must say we do

not see any reason for discussing any further those

1

2 VIEWS OF CREATION

pious feelings for the mere universe which in a
certain sense may claim to be a religion.

David Friedrich Strauss in his book on The
Old and the New Faith, which once excited so
much attention and even to-day is still the "gospel "
of so many " pantheists " (compare Häckel, The
Riddle of the Universe, p. 357), gives a flat denial
to the question, " Are we still Christians ? " but
on the contrary answers the question, " Have we
still a Religion ? " by saying, " Yes or No, just as
you understand it ". We will not flatly contradict
him, but we must contradict and refute his asser-
tion as psychologically impossible, when he says,
on the same page : " We claim the same reverence
for our universe as the believers of the old school
for their God ". An atheist or pantheist can
neither possess nor claim the same reverence for
an impersonal universe that the believer, whether
of the old or new school cherishes for his per-
sonal God, in whom, as theist or deist, he sees
the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth, and
in whom, as a Christian, he finds his Heavenly
Father.1

1 For those who are not acquainted with scientific phraseology,
we add here that Deism is that view of the world which assumes
that while God has created the world, after He created it He

PANTHEISM 3

In assigning so low a place to the religion of an
atheist or pantheist, as compared with the religion
of a Theist, we are corroborated by the eloquent
witness of a scientist who has passed through every
stage of the religious and the irreligious conception
of the universe and finally fought his way back
again to a Christian view of the world. I refer to
the English scientist and scholar, George John
Romanes, one of Darwin's intimate and younger
friends, who made very valuable researches regard-
ing the mental development of animals and men.
Through all the stages of his atheistic, Theistic
and Christian views, he never gave up the thought

let it go its own way independently; Theism assumes that the
Creator remains immanent, always alive and present in the world
He has made ; Pantheism is that system according to which God
and the world are one ; Atheism, that which denies the Being of
God. For Deism, God is a transcendent, remote Being, over
against the world He has called into existence ; Theism com-
bines transcendence with immanence, i.e., the presence of God in
the Universe ; Pantheism, with its union of God and the world,
knows only immanence. Finally, a movement was set on foot
in England by Huxley and Herbert Spencer which is called
Agnosticism and implies that it is absolultey impossible to know
the Final Cause of Existence ; at any rate we are not to attribute
Personality to God because such a thing is unintelligible with-
out the limitation of a Non-Ego — an objection often echoed in
Germany ; the expression " the Supra-personality of God " is
nreferable.

4 VIEWS OF CREATION

of an origin of organisms through gradual Evolu-
tion. In his twenty-fifth year, he still occupied
the position of a Christian Theist and from this
standpoint gained the Burney Prize in the year
1873, on the subject of Christian Prayer and
Natural Law. But whilst engaged in this, doubts
began to trouble him, and these gained so much
influence over him that in 1876 he wrote A Candid
Examination of Theism from a thoroughly sceptical
and in fact actually atheistic standpoint. This
was published in 1878 under the pseudonym of
" Physicus ". In it he made the following touch-
ing confession, which is quoted by Bishop Gore,
the editor of Romanes' posthumous work, Thoughts
on Religion (Longmans & Co., London, 1895) :
"And now in conclusion I feel it is desirable to
state that any antecedent bias with regard to
Theism which I individually possess is unquestion-
ably on the side of traditional beliefs. It is there-
fore with the utmost sorrow that I find myself
compelled to accept the conclusions here worked
out; and nothing would have induced me to publish
them, save the strength of my conviction that it
is the duty of every member of society to give
his fellows the benefit of his labours for whatever

G. J. ROMANES 5

they may be worth. Just as I am convinced that
truth must in the end be the most profitable for
mankind, so I am persuaded that every individual
endeavour to attain it, provided only that such
endeavour is unbiassed and sincere, ought with-
out hesitation to be made the common property of
all men, no matter in what direction the results
of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so
far as the ruination of individual happiness is
concerned, no one can have a more lively percep-
tion than myself of the possibly disastrous ten-
dency of my work. So far as I am individually
concerned, the result of this analysis has been
to show that, whether I regard- the problem of
Theism on the lower plane of strictly relative
probability or on the higher plane of purely formal
considerations, it equally becomes my obvious
duty to stifle all belief of the kind which I conceive
to be the noblest, and to discipline my intellect
with regard to this matter into an attitude of the
purest scepticism. And for as much as I am far
from being able to agree with those who affirm
that the twilight doctrine of the ' new faith ' is a
desirable substitute for the waning splendour of
1 the old,' I am not ashamed to confess that with

6 VIEWS OF CREATION

this virtual negation of God, the Universe to me
has lost its soul of loveliness ; and although from
henceforth the precept to ' work while it is day '
will doubtless but gain an intensified force from
the terribly intensified meaning of the words that
1 the night cometh when no man can work,' yet
when at times I think, as think at times I must,
of the appalling contrast between the hallowed
glory of that creed which once was mine, and
the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it —
at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to
avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is
susceptible."

Now if we begin with the general comparison
indicated in the title of the present chapter, there
are two principles determined for us. One has
been already hinted at in the Introduction, viz.,
that every phenomenon in the world may be re-
garded both from a scientific and a religious
point of view, and is in fact regarded from either
one or the other standpoint. The second prin-
ciple consists in the consideration that it is just
in this general sphere that the main conflict has
raged most acutely, so acutely that many have
been led to believe that the opposition between a

ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENCE 7

scientific and a religious or theistic view of the
world is irreconcilable — in fact that the one ex-
cludes the other.

The way in which the scientific man regards
the world in general and in detail, consists in
this, that what he perceives he endeavours to
explain from natural causes as far as possible.
Now scientific research has achieved much on
this path. If we cast our eyes over a single
century — e.g., the one just behind us — with what
surprising clearness has scientific research in this
comparatively short period opened up vast spheres
of knowledge, of which mankind, until lately, had
no idea whatsoever ! In the first place, I call to
mind the magnificent vista of the earth's history
and inhabitants that has been opened up by
Geology, and bringing year by year fresh sur-
prises ; then, the glimpse we have had into the
structure of the universe and of the unity of
matter and energy, thanks to Cosmic Physics and
to the improvement of our instruments. Finally
I must mention the arduous labours in connection
with the problem of the origin of species and of
mankind, in which Darwin has been our leader.
The further research presses on, the more do

8 VIEWS OF CREATION

new problems arise for solution, only to make
room in their turn for other problems. Nor will
this advance in knowledge ever cease while the
world lasts. It is the joy of all scientific men
to appropriate what the Science of to-day has
put into their hands ; then, advancing past their
forefathers, to toil on, hand in hand with their con-
temporaries, in the arduous pursuit after further
knowledge. This is the view which the scientific
man takes of the realm of creation.

Far otherwise is the view of the man who is
religiously inclined. For him the whole universe
is a revelation of the Divine Glory, the Work of
the Living God, who created, sustains, guides and
controls the world and all that therein is. Even
those occurrences and phenomena, the natural
causes of which he has learnt to know through
Science, are not excluded from his religious stand-
point by the knowledge of their causes and the
laws of their action. For all this matter, all these
energies, all these laws are in his eyes just as
truly works of the same God Who created the
whole universe and Who, by means of these
energies and laws, upholds and governs all things
great and small.1

THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 9

Far from seeing his faith in the Creator in-
jured by his increased knowledge of natural causes
and of the laws of their operation, he recognises
therein not only no divergence from his knowledge
of God, but on the other hand a positive enrich-
ment of that knowledge. Moreover, the religious
man sees in everything that nature offers him by
way of gifts and pleasure, only gifts of a Divine
Goodness which he receives with thankfulness,
while in all experiences of pain or hindrance he
sees a training-school of Divine Wisdom and
Love, which he accepts with submission.

If in this way of looking at things the highly-
cultured and the less-educated, the learned and
the ignorant, are at one, in so far as they are
both religiously disposed, may we not find in this a
proof that our presentation of the religious stand-
point is a sound one ? For religion ought to be a
universal blessing, not a privilege for the talented
alone, any more than a substitute for other joys,
of which the uneducated are deprived.

This position of absolute peace between the
scientific and the religious aspects of the world,
which we hold, is so stoutly contradicted by some
scientists that even those who hold a religious

10 VIEWS OF CREATION

view of the world are misled by this disagreement,
lose faith in any harmony of both aspects, and
charge Science with severing Nature from its
Divine Originator. "Either natural origin and
natural evolution, or else Creation! The one
excludes the other! " Such is the cry one hears
and has heard not only in popular lectures and
debates, but also in scientific works for decades
past and even in those of to-day. The popular
scientific works by Ernst Häckel are quite a
typical case in point. The title of the first of
these works, The Natural History of Creation, was
chosen with the direct object of presenting this
account of natural origins as the only true view
in opposition to the Biblical and Theistic con-
ception. In the very first of the twenty-four
lectures into which the book is divided, and over
and over again throughout its pages, Häckel states
his causal mechanical theory of the world — his
so-called Monism — as the only authorised theory
in opposition to the detestable Dualism of a
teleological and theistic theory. The bluntness
with which he dismisses the thought of a Creator
of the world increases in the two popular scientific
works, which followed. In his Anthropogeny he

HAECKEL 1 1

says (p. 88) : " The antiquated fable of the wise
scheme whereby the Creator's hand ordered all
things in wisdom and understanding, the empty
phrase of a design in the structure of organisms,
is completely refuted". "Either blind belief in
a Creator or the scientific theory of evolution ! "
he cries. Of course, from this point of view, the
feelings of gratitude toward the Creator as the
Giver of every good gift disappear. He says
again : " Human vanity and human pride, since
the awakening of human consciousness, have got
into the way of regarding Man as the peculiar
object and end of all life on earth, as the central
point of earth's being, for whose use and service
all the other activities of nature have from the
beginning been determined or predestinated by a
wise Providence". This presumptuous anthro-
pocentric1 conceit is pronounced entirely unten-
able. Courtesy towards other people's ways of
thinking is certainly not Häckel's strong point.
This is the way in which he concludes his twenty-
third lecture in the Natural History of Creation : —
''Readiness to accept the theory of Evolution
and the monistic philosophy founded upon it

1 J.e., making man the central point.

12 VIEWS OF CREATION

forms the best criterion of one's mental develop-
ment ". The pioneer in the history of the develop-
ment of the individual embryo, Charles Ernest v.
Baer had published in his eighty-fourth year
a number of treatises which are of the greatest
importance for the criticism of the teleological
view and the Darvvinistic theory of selection.
They still attract much notice in our own day,
but they are inconvenient for Häckel's theory.
In his Riddle of the Universe (pp. 308-10 ; E. Tr.,
p. 95), he pays Von Baer the compliment of
saying that he is suffering from old age, and that,
owing to a mystical strain which has become
more and more firmly implanted in him with
increasing age, he can no longer follow the latest
achievements of science. If Von Baer had sur-
vived to hear this reproach, he might have com-
forted himself with the thought of a Newton
whose Christian convictions were excused, on the
score of old age, by the upholders of an opposite
view of the world. The above-mentioned work
of Häckel, which appeared in 1899, represented
the high-water mark of polemic against Theism
and Christianity. The fourth and last section of
the work and the conclusion of the third are

HAECKEL ] 3

entirely devoted to this attack. Possibly the
modest confession at the close, that as regards
the innermost essence of Nature, we are, perhaps,
to-day, as far off from the truth and as ignorant
as were Anaximander and Empedocles, two thou-
sand four hundred years ago, Spinoza and Newton
two hundred years ago, and Kant and Goethe
one hundred years ago — possibly this may seem
conciliatory, but while such utterances might
have justified the hope that both Christianity
and Theism would be treated with at least some
measure of reverence, this hope remains unful-
filled. The way in which the Person of Jesus
Christ is handled must give the deepest pain to
every Christian, and the lack of taste to which
antipathy is liable, is shown by the way in which
Häckel scoffs at Theism, not only in the Riddle
of the Universe but also in earlier publications. It
is not to be expected that every reader will find
out for himself in such writings the point at
which scientific research ends and metaphysical
argument begins. The latter can be conducted
by two different men from quite the same
scientific discoveries, and yet attain to quite
opposite results if both presuppose opposite con-

14 VIEWS OF CREATION

ceptions of the universe. With this however we
will deal later. Meanwhile another perfectly
reasonable suspicion may suggest itself; indeed
it will possibly occur to any reader, viz., that this
whole polemic starts from a false conception of
creation.

CHAPTER II

THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION AS RECORDED IN

THE BIBLE

The two alternatives of the polemic we have just

been noticing are " Either natural origin and

natural evolution, or Creation ". If this dilemma

referred only to the universe as a whole and

simply meant that, according to one view, the

universe owes its existence, both in shape and

substance, to the Creative Will, Almighty Power,

and Wisdom of God, while according to the other

it came into being of itself — there would be no

objection to such an antithesis. All it maintains

is that these two views are irreconcilable and that

each has its supporters.

But many of the controversialists, including

supporters as well as opponents of the idea of

Creation, are of opinion that Creation, according

to a Christian and Biblical interpretation, involves

the further assumption that the individual inhabi-

15

16 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

tants of that region of the universe with which we
are best acquainted, because it is our own dwelling-
place, namely, the plants, animals, and people of
the earth, originally appeared in all their different
kinds and species, being suddenly summoned from
non-existence into existence. Such a theory, it is
held, alone entitles their origin to be called crea-
tion. We are to picture the scene somewhat as
the archangel Raphael describes the work of the
sixth day in Haydn's glorious oratorio, "The
Creation ". " And God spake, ' Let the earth
bring forth living creatures after their kind \
Immediately the earth opened its lap and at
God's word bore creatures of every kind in per-
fect development and in almost infinite number.
Here stood the lion roaring for joy, here the
nimble tiger crouched ; there the swift stag raised
its antlers, and again the noble horse with flowing
mane pranced and curvetted in its strength."
Such a conception of the Creation, which as an
imaginative picture draws upon the beautiful and
purely monotheistic presentation of Creation in
the Bible, will always maintain its right and
exercise its fascination in the sphere of poetry
and art, but to recognise in it an adequate pre-

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 17

sentation of the real order of events at the time
of their occurrence and a serviceable foundation
for any conception of Creation, is impossible except
for one who is absolutely devoid of any knowledge
of what scientific research has disclosed and just
as devoid of any grasp of a correct Biblical idea
of Creation which corresponds to the spirit as well
as to the letter of the Scriptures.

We shall have occasion in our next chapter to
speak at length of the results of Modern Science ;
at present we must examine the question of the
conception of Creation as presented to us by the
Bible.

The Bible opens with two accounts of Creation
immediately following each other. The first, which
in point of origin is the later account, commences
with Genesis i. I, and continues to the first half
of the fourth verse in chapter ii. The second and
much earlier account is to be found from chapter
ii. 4 to the end of the chapter, running right
on through chapters iii. and iv. as the story of
the Fall and the First Generations of Mankind.

Now whoever is of opinion that reverence for

the Scriptures compels him to understand these

accounts as literal representations of what actually

2

18 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

occurred at Creation, and does not know anything
of the light thrown by Science on the origin of
organisms, must of necessity arrive at a concep-
tion of Creation which will lead him into conflict
with Natural Science. The second and older ac-
count of Creation will be more than ever likely to
bring him to this pass. He will imagine that
God, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth,
did not first of all assume the form of man in
Paradise, out of love to the first human pair,
walking in the garden in the cool of the day,
but that it was on purpose to create man that
He took upon Him such a shape, formed Man
from a lump of earth, and, into the nostrils of
the figure thus formed, breathed the breath of
life. He will imagine that the animals, apart
from the higher soul possessed by Man, were
created in a somewhat similar manner, because
it is said of them that God made them out of
the earth. He will have visions of how God took
a rib from the sleeping man and of it formed a
woman. In all this he will feel himself bound
to visualise the actual events, and he will be
tempted to consider that those who do not think
as he does must be less religious because they
are less subservient to the text of Scripture.

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 19

Unfortunately for such a standpoint no less an
authority than Holy Scripture itself actually for-
bids us to take the two accounts of Creation as
statements of what really happened. For the
accounts are contradictory, both as regards the
manner in which the different creatures were
summoned into existence by the Creator and as
regards the order of the various acts of creation.
The pious Israelite who found to his hand these
ancient records of the story of the earth and
pieced them together, constructing thereby a mag-
nificent portal for the Story of Salvation, he and
the people who nourished themselves on both
alike, must have found the worth and harmony
of these narratives for their religious sense some-
where else than in their two very different accounts
of the outward order of events.

Let us face this apparent contradiction !

The earlier but in point of age the later account
(Gen. i.), sees Creation in all its details completed
by the creative word of God : " God spake and
it was done ". The Creation is moreover brought
to a state of perfection in six days of work,
which seem to be arranged according to a double
principle. One of these is that in the first half

20 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

of the week of Creation, i.e. during the three first
days, the four elements of antiquity are called into
being, fire, air, earth, and water; in these the
separate beings are to move that live in these
elements. On the first day, Light : on the second
— by the division of the upper from the lower
waters by means of the firmament : Water and
Air — on the third, Dry Land covered by the world
of plants. In the second half — the fourth, fifth
and sixth days — the separate beings are created
that move in those elements ; on the fourth day,
the Lights of Heaven : on the fifth, the Creatures
of Water and Air : on the sixth, the Creatures of
the Land and — Man. Man indeed is the Crown
and End of Creation, the image of God, and Man
is male and female. The other principle is that
of the gradual preparation of the earth to be an
adequate dwelling-place for Man. Next to these
two principles comes a third, recognisable by the
fact that the Six Divine Days of Creation were
succeeded by the Seventh Day of Rest which God
blessed and hallowed.

This Divine Week is an archetype and type for
men who are made in the image of God (Gen. i.
26, 27). Man must also divide his human days

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 21

into weeks of seven days, of which the first six
days are appointed for work, while the seventh is
set apart for rest, and to this end is blessed and
hallowed.

In the second and older narrative which begins
with the second half of Genesis ii. 4, there is
nothing said anywhere of a creative word of God.
We read of God making or forming. This is very
clearly described in the account of the creation
of man and woman, and in the story of the
Creation of the lower animals the process is also
called a forming. Nor is there a trace to be found
here of the division of Creation into six days or of
a Creation Week of seven days, any more than
in the Creation myths of those nations whose
civilisation is connected with that of Israel. The
Phoenician, e.g., the Egyptian, and especially the
Babylonian myths, in spite of several resemblances
to both the first and second Biblical accounts,
nowhere show any division of the different stages
of creations into days of work. The only resem-
blance to the Biblical Week of Creation that one
can possibly find, i.e. in the ancient Babylonian
records, consists in the fact that the Babylonian
account of Creation was written on seven tablets.

22 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

This suggestion I owe to Professor Gunkel. One
might more feasibly speak of a single creative Day,
in connection with the second account. It begins
in Genesis ii. 4 with the words, "in the Day
when the Lord made the heavens and the earth ".
The Hebrew particle of time here is literally
translated, but we are ready to believe that this
particle had come to mean a period of time,
instead of implying that Creation took place in a
single Day. Still the use of the singular shows
at least that the account contained in Genesis
i. 1 was not yet known to the author or else he
would have used the plural particle and said as
follows: "On the days," etc. The earth at the
beginning of the narrative is already there ; it
has not yet rained and there is therefore as yet
no vegetable world but only a surface of the
earth watered by a " mist ". (Gunkel in his Com-
mentary on Genesis translates this difficult word
by "stream".) But Man is not now as in the first
account the end and aim of Creation ; he is its
beginning. In the first place, the Lord God forms
Man out of the dust of the ground (so Kautzsch
translates ; Gunkel, " from the dust of the earth,"
"aus Staub aus dem Acker"; Luther, "from a

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 23

lump of earth," "aus einem Erdenkloss ") and
breathes into his nostrils the breath of life (Gen.
ii. 7). God proceeds to plant a garden in Eden
far to the East, where He places Man (verse 8).
He then makes all kinds of fruit trees grow up out
of the ground, while in the middle of the garden
are the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Know-
ledge of Good and Evil (verse 9). In verses 10-14
the rivers of Eden are described, and in verse 15
the reason for which God put Man in the garden,
namely, " to dress it and keep it ". In verses 16
and 17, God gives Man permission to eat of all
the trees of the garden as he pleases, but forbids
him to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil. According to verse 18, God decides to
create a suitable helpmeet for him. He forms
out of the earth the animals and birds, bringing
them to Man that he may name them (verse 19).
Man does this, but he does not find in the animals
the helpmeet suitable for him. Then the Lord
God makes a deep sleep fall upon him, takes
a rib from his side, forms it into a Woman and
brings her to Adam, and in Woman Man at last
finds his suitable helpmeet (verses 21-24).

If we wish to be convinced of this difference

24 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

between the two accounts, we must certainly not
employ the translations of the Scriptures that
have been introduced into the Churches, neither
Luther's, nor that of Allioli, nor the Vulgate.
These were all made on the silent assumption,
which was perfectly natural at the time when
the translators lived, but is indubitably false,
that there were not two accounts but a single,
continuous, coherent record of Creation in which
there could be no contradiction. In the interests
of harmony, some violence was therefore done
to the original text at the critical passages that
betray the contradiction most clearly. Thus in
the original text of Genesis ii. 18, the word trans-
lated by Luther and Allioli " Gehilfin," is a word
of common gender, "a helpmeet"; in the Greek
translation of the Septuagint it is " boethos," also
of common gender, and in the Vulgate "adju-
torium ". In the two German translations, we
find the word "Gehilfin" (helpmeet) as if here
only the woman were meant, while according to
the context the animal world was recognised first
as his helpmeet, and then, when this proved un-
suitable, Woman was made, to be recognised by
Man as his perfect helpmeet. In the following

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 25

verse (verse 19) we read, "And out of the ground
the Lord God formed every beast of the field and
every fowl of the air," etc. The Vulgate has an
ambiguous expression, " Formatis igitur Dominus
Deus de humo cunctis animantibus terrae . . .
adduxit ea ad Adam". Allioli here gives the
correct sense, translating " also bildete Gott der
Herr" "So the Lord God formed. . . ." But
Luther in his translation shows quite clearly
his harmonistic standpoint, which makes him in
Genesis ii. keep to the order of Creation as it is
related in the first chapter, and place Man as
the last of God's creatures ; hence he translates
the words of the original, contrary to the meaning
of the original text : " For when the Lord God
had made every beast of the field," " Denn als
Gott der Herr gemacht hatte allerlei Tiere auf
dem Felde".

Any one who wishes to learn the actual wording
of the narratives must read them either in the
original Hebrew, or in the Greek translation, the
so-called Septuagint, which had its origin before
the completion of the Old Testament Canon, and
which translates the two narratives exactly as they
stand in the original and vivid Hebrew ; despite

26 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

the differences in the accounts, the Septuagint
puts them quite naively side by side, so that the
difference between the two becomes absolutely
clear. If any one has any difficulty in getting
at these two sources he should read the two
accounts in the translation of the Old Testament
by Kautzsch (published by J. C. B. Mohr) where
the contradiction of the two will at once become
apparent.

The whole of the difficulty above described exists
for German, not for English readers. The English
reader has only in Genesis ii. 4, after the words
''when they were created," to put a full stop
instead of the comma. He will then find in the
words " In the day that the Lord God made," etc.,
the beginning of the second and more ancient
account of Creation. This agrees quite literally
with the original text. Besides, in verses 18 and
20 the English version has the only correct word,
" an help ". In verse 19, also the construction
entirely agrees with the original, " And out of the
ground the Lord God formed every beast of the
field " etc. This clearly shows the contradiction
between the two accounts.

He who in the face of this contradiction is

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 27

convinced of the impossibility of regarding the
two accounts as revelations of the real course of
events, but who is still inclined to look for such a
revelation in Holy Scripture, may perhaps attempt
to sacrifice the second of the accounts, finding
this revelation in the first narrative, that of
Genesis i.

Several considerations seem to favour this at-
tempt. The second, for all the absolutely incom-
parable beauty and naivete of its portraiture, shows
such a decided tendency to introduce God in the
form of Man, such a decidedly mythical strain
("mythical," that is, in that deep sense according
to which the noblest ideas are veiled in the form
of pictorial representation and spontaneous poetry),
that it must seem to the reader but a profanation
of its beauty to drag this story down to the region
of historical fact. What lends permanent value,
even of a religious character, to this story is
the exceptionally beautiful representation of the
relation between Man and Woman, and, in the
story of the Fall, which immediately follows, the
exceedingly deep and true psychology, the ethical
force, and the ethical purity of the description of
Sin's origin, essence, and consequences. This

28 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

beauty illumines us with unclouded light so long
as we read the story as myth or parable ; it is
not only dimmed but absolutely destroyed so soon
as we imagine we must take it as a record of
the actual occurrences. Such an idea must be
scouted on all hands.

Very different is the first of the two accounts. In
contrast to the second it is throughout a piece of re-
flection, although even it contains traces of mythical
elements, such as are to be found in the description
of Chaos. Its purpose, as Wellhausen in his
Prolegomena to the History of Israel (p. 313) has
already put it, is to describe the real course of
events at the Creation, and this is done worthily
— judged by our higher conceptions of God — and
even in harmony with a more correct view of the
occurrences than our ancestors possessed. When
we read " God spake and it was done," we must
not think that the narrator himself identified
Divine with human speech ; he simply wanted to
express Omnipotence, just as at the present day
we are unable to express the Creative Omnipotence
of God more vividly than by saying in the words
of Psalm xxxviii. 9, " He spake and it was done:
He commanded and it stood fast ". It is poss-

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 29

ible, in the recital of all these creative acts, that
what really happened has been depicted in a more
childlike and somewhat different manner from that
which Natural Science has discovered or will yet
discover for us ; but, in all these expressions,
the relative independence of natural causes is
constantly recognised, and room is left for a more
mature knowledge of the natural processes in
question.

But it is especially the knowledge of the unity
and the Creative Omnipotence of God that meets
us in the first chapter — a chapter which is so
noble and magnificent that it far surpasses all
those myths of Creation outside the Bible, to
which indeed this account bears some resemblance;
it endows the Biblical record with permanent
educative value not with a mere historical interest.

We are bound, therefore, to consider every at-
tempt to find an objectively accurate description
of the course of events in the account given in
Genesis i., as a complete misinterpretation and
misconstruction of the Bible's real value for man-
kind. The Bible is no handbook of Science ; it
does not pretend to be such. What reason is there
that we should expect from God a supernatural

30 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

account of events in the universe of which no man
could be eye-witness, of events too which do not
bear in any way upon the knowledge of salvation,
events and processes whose investigation He has
left to Man's natural powers? Whether God
made our world in a space of time that must be
reckoned by millions of years, or in a few days,
whether or no the plants were called into existence
before the sun, moon, stars, and animals, as that
record says they were — all this has nothing to do
with the redemption that Christ has brought us.
Whereas the assertion that God has left us free
to investigate occurrences in the universe that
took place previous to mankind or lay outside his
domain, is confirmed both by the results of Science
and by the idea of the world on which the Old
Testament accounts are founded. Magnificent dis-
coveries in the sphere of natural history have
been achieved already by Science, and have im-
measurably extended our ideas of the contents,
history, and scope of the universe, while the con-
ception that the Biblical account offers us is not
in any way in advance of the views that the ancient
peoples entertained. Even in the Bible the earth
is the central point of the universe, and the firma-

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 31

ment, as the name in all the languages of antiquity
shows, is a solid arch above which lie the upper
waters that come down in the form of rain. Sun,
moon, and stars are not celestial bodies but lights
which move on the firmament and regulate time
on earth. Every attempt to bring the series of
the Days of Creation into exact accord with the
results of geology must entirely break down. The
plants were not called into existence before the
heavenly bodies and were not perfect after their
kind when the animal world appeared; on the
contrary, the world of organisms presupposes the
existence of the earth as a body revolving on its
own axis round the sun, whilst plants and animals
appeared alike in the so-called protist kingdom,1
ascended side by side through very slow stages
of evolution and processes of differentiation, and
so reached their present state.

In only one fact do the Bible and Science agree,
namely, that Man is the last and at the same time

1 This is the name given to the lowest single-celled organisms
which as yet do not bear the specific qualities by which plants and
animals differ, and which yet are living things. The graceful and
extremely diversified diatoms, for example, belong to this kingdom.
The name "protist" is formed from the Greek word " prötos "
(first).

32 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

the highest creature known to us, when we sur-
vey the organic kingdom as a great whole.
Whether certain individual and subordinate kinds
of plants or animals have come into existence
since the appearance of Man is an open question ;
it is as difficult a problem as that of "species"
which was once looked upon as settled, but which
the prevailing theories of evolution have now
broken up.

A further appeal is made against the endeavour
to find in Gen. i. a Divinely revealed presentation
of the real course of events at the Creation, viz.,
on the ground that according to this account the
world from its commencement to the appearance
of Man was called into being in six days of twenty-
four hours in length / With this objection I cannot
agree, on exegetical grounds. To my mind, the
exegesis that sees in the Six Days of Creation
and in the Seventh Day of Rest only human days,
is entirely erroneous, although this is held in the
excellent new commentaries on Genesis by Pro-
fessors Gunkel and Holzinger. These days are,
indeed, according to the mind of the narrator,
days and nothing more ; yet they are not human
days but Divine Days which are as superior to

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 33

the days of Man who is made in the image of

God, as the original is greater than its pattern.

Two reasons are to be found in the text of the

narrative which incline me to this view. To begin

with, these Days of Creation according to the

clear meaning of the original had no night. The

record describes the end of a Day of Creation each

time in a somewhat similar recurring formula,

which in a literal translation runs much as follows :

" And it was Evening and it was Morning, First

Day, Second Day, Third Day, Fourth Day, Fifth

Day, the Sixth Day ". With Man's days, evening

follows the work of day, night follows evening,

and morning night ; in the case of God's Days of

Creation, Night is left out altogether, though, if

the Divine Days had had a night, the narrator

would have had ample occasion to have mentioned

it. For he tells us just beforehand that God

divided the Light from the Darkness, and called

the Light Day and the Darkness Night. It

almost seems to me as if the fear of changing

the Divine Days into periods, in the attempts

made by Professor Franz Delitzsch and others to

form what is really a false harmony between the

Bible and Science, had so clouded their eyes that

3

34 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

they preferred the most forced explanation of the
words to their clear and obvious meaning. If the
generally accepted view to-day is firmly estab-
lished, viz., that the account in Genesis belongs
to the book of the priests which was compiled in
the fifth century b.c., then the story must have
come into existence at a time when all the writ-
ings of the prophets had become common property
in Israel, and when such a knowledge of God was
paramount as has found its classical expression in
Psalm cxxxix. 12 : " Yea, darkness hideth not
from Thee ; but the night shineth as the day : the
darkness and the light are both alike to Thee ".
Such a conception of the Deity takes for granted
that even if the Days of God were regarded by the
author as ordinary days, yet as being Divine they
could have no night.

Another proof that in the mind of the narrator
the Days of Creation were regarded as Divine
Days, different from and higher than the days of
Man, lies in the circumstance that in the descrip-
tion of the Seventh Day as the Divine Day of Rest,
the closing words: "And the Evening and the
Morning were the Seventh Day " are wanting.
Nothing is more natural than to suppose that no

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 35

end was recorded for the Seventh Day of this
Divine Week of Creation because according to
the idea of the author it had none ; it is still
going on.

This is the simplest and most obvious exegesis,
in my judgment at any rate, of the passage. Ac-
cording to John v., the Jews had reproached Jesus
with having broken the Sabbath, because on the
Sabbath Day He had healed a man who had been
ill for thirty-eight years, and in verse 17 Jesus
tells these Jews, who on account of this " breach
of the Sabbath " actually sought to kill Him,
" My Father worketh hitherto and I work ". This
reply is only explicable if Jesus intended and was
understood by His hearers to mean, " My Father
worketh hitherto, although He has entered into
His Sabbath Rest : so I also do the works of My
Father on the Sabbath as well as on week-days ".
So the Epistle to the Hebrews in quoting the 95th
Psalm refers expressly to Genesis ii. 1-3, and from
this passage affirms that the Sabbath Rest of God
is still in continuance (iv. 9), and is reserved for
His People.

I dealt with this interpretation at more detail
in the year 1887, in a special treatise on the Days

36 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

of Genesis, in the Year-book of Protestant Theology,
thirteenth issue, vol. iv. (pp. 688-714). I have
nothing to add now except that I have been sub-
sequently convinced that the myths of Creation
among other nations contain no trace of a division
of the works of Creation into works of an ordinary
day, and that the thought of a Divine Week of
Creation with seven ordinary days seems to be
entirely a product of the Israelitish mind. This
idea may indeed have arisen long before the so-
called Book of the Priests or even before the
second account of Creation which underlies the
Decalogue in Exodus xx. 1-17, where the com-
mandment for the Sabbath contained in verse 11
is expressly referred to the example of the Divine
Week of Creation. We have no textual reasons
for seeing a later insertion in this verse.

Of course the author of that ancient form of the
Decalogue which belonged to the period of myth-
making, may have identified the Divine Days with
earthly days, just as the author of the second
account of Creation makes the Creator walk in
the Garden in the cool of the day. But the author
of the first and later story of Creation would have
exalted that idea, clothed as it was in the guise

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 37

of myths, to a higher and purer level, seeing that
the prophets had been for centuries accustomed to
speak of a Day of the Lord as a Day of Salvation
and of Judgment without meaning to identify it
with an earthly day.

We Christians can calmly recognise this de-
velopment in the knowledge of God without feeling
ourselves bound to draw therefrom the conclusion
that this idea of a great Divine Week of Creation,
extending from the beginning to the end of the
world, answers to the objective reality. Magnificent
and thoughtful and vivid as this idea is, that a
division of our earthly days into weeks with six
week days and one day of rest was originally laid
down as a foundation of all our natural life, yet
we must not hesitate to say that the knowledge of
the duration of time and of the order of events by
means of which the present state of the world was
brought about, has been handed over by God to
scientific research. He has not reserved it for an
alleged revelation, which should be in flat contra-
diction to the manifest results of that research.

Let us now return to the aim we set before us
in this chapter, namely to prove that the Biblical
Idea of Creation certainly does assume that the

38 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

theory of the Divine Creation and origin of the
different objects in the world involves a belief that
these were called into being without the interven-
tion of natural causes.

The closer study of the two accounts has brought
us to the negative proof that these in no way bind
us to any definite conception of the manner in
which God created the contents of the world.
For in their conception of the mode of Creation,
both accounts are so different that they are in this
aspect quite irreconcilable. Whoever is of the
opinion, an opinion which I myself do not hold,
that in at least one of the two accounts he must
discover a revelation of the real order of events at
the Creation, can only have recourse to the first
and later of the two accounts ; and this is the very
one which clearly presupposes the co-operation of
natural causes in the Creation of the separate
phenomena of the universe.

Now if we turn our eyes right away from the
two accounts, and look for a moment at the other
modes of expression and aspects that the Bible
presents in describing the Creation, we shall come
upon numerous examples which positively prove

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 39

that by all the writers of Scripture who speak of
this creative activity, God is not only named the
Creator of all that was created up to and includ-
ing Man, but also the Creator of everything that
comes into existence to-day or that will come into
existence in the future, despite the fact that there
are also natural causes to account for the exist-
ence of these later "Creations of God".

The individual Hebrew names God when he
uses religious language ; He calls on Him not
simply as the Creator of Adam and Eve, but
cries: "Thou art my Creator". The people of
Israel are His Creation, the peoples yet unborn
are created by Him : yea, everything is created by
Him. To speak in the language of theology, the
ideas of the Creation and the Preservation of the
world become one in the consciousness of the
Biblical writers. This is Luther's interpretation.
In his Exegetica opera latina (Frankfurt, Erlang,
fifth edition, p. 230) he observes : " With God,
Creating and Preservation are one and the same
(cp. Köstlin, Luther's Theology, second edition, ii.,
p. 98).

A few examples may suffice, though they could

40 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

be multiplied a hundredfold. I quote them in the
order of the books from which they are taken. In
Job xxxii. 22, xxxv. 10, xxxvi. 3, Elihu says to
God, "Thou art my Creator". In Psalm cii. ig,
" The people that shall be. born" (i.e., " shallbe
created ") " shall praise the Lord ". In Psalm civ.
30, " Thou sendest forth Thy Breath, they are
created". "Remember now Thy Creator in the
days of thy youth" (Eccl. xii. 1). "At that day
shall a man look to His Maker " (Is. xvii. 7). " The
Lord hath created a new thing in the earth " (Jer.
xxxi. 22). " For Israel hath forgotten His Maker "
(Hos. viii. 14). There is even a passage in the
Psalms in which the unalterable reign of law over
everything that happens in the universe, which
is precisely what the opponents of the Biblical
Idea of Creation exploit, is described as so
willed and created by God (cp. Ps. cxlviii. 5, 6).
"These" (that is the "heaven of heavens" and
the waters above the heavens) " shall praise the
name of the Lord," for He commanded and they
were created. " He holds them for ever and
ever; He ordains them so that they cannot go
in another direction ". Professor Kautzsch trans-

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 41

lates the sixth verse still more literally, and
makes the sense thereby much clearer : " He hath
also stablished them for ever and ever : He hath
made a decree which they shall not pass ". Can the
immutability of the laws of Nature be more clearly
expressed than it is here ? Is not this an answer
to the assertion that this immutability clashes
both with the Scriptural view of Creation and
with the idea of miracles ? Such passages as this
help to bring us nearer to the belief that the
theory of an eternal duration of the world and
its control by law is by no means excluded from
the standpoint of Scripture, and that this does
not exclude but rather includes a subsequent
change and glorification of the world. " Of old
hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth ; and
the heavens are the work of Thy Hands. They
shall perish, but Thou shalt endure ; yea, all of
them shall wax old like a garment : as a vesture
shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed.
But Thou art the same and Thy years shall have
no end " (Ps. cii. 25-27).

We think that we have hereby proved that
Scripture in no way starts from the hypothesis

42 THE CONCEPTION OF CREATION

that the conception of the various contents of the
universe as created by a Divine act excludes the
working of natural causes ; and that, on the con-
trary, the natural causes by which creatures are
called into existence are recognised as such by
the religious consciousness of the biblical writers,
but are traced back by them to God's Will and
Almighty Power. The opponents of the Biblical
Idea of Creation only show, by the charges they
bring against us, that they are ignorant of the
spirit and language of the Bible — a condition
which they certainly share with those defenders
of the Biblical Idea who assert that the creation
of the different objects in the world excludes the
working of natural causes. We again have the
unalloyed joy on the one hand of following Science
and on the other of seeing in all the discoveries
of Science an advance in our knowledge of the
manner in which God created and sustains the
world. Every fresh step in this advance will be a
deepening of our knowledge of God, and we shall
find that with the progress of our scientific know-
ledge our faith remains not only uninjured but
essentially enriched and invigorated. Indeed this

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE 43

Faith can harmonise with that religious view of
Nature which meets us in the Bible and finds
beautiful expression in the words of Psalm civ.,
24 : " O Lord, how manifold are Thy works, in
wisdom hast Thou made them all ; the earth is
full of Thy Goodness ". The words of Jesus in
the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vi. 26-30),
speaking of the birds of the air and the lilies of
the field, are the New Testament confirmation of
this Old Testament view of Nature, while at the
same time they give a practical turn to the ex-
hortation to trust in God. Finally, the last book
of the Bible, the Revelation of John, is a fit
counterpart to the first chapter of the Bible. In
chapter iv. n, the representatives of redeemed
mankind in heaven break forth into the song,
"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and
honour and power: for Thou hast created all
things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were
created ". And in chapter v. 13 the writer hears
" every creature which is in Heaven and on the
earth and under the earth and such as are in the
sea and all that are in them," saying, " Blessing
and honour and glory and power be unto Him

44 THE CONCEPTION IN THE BIBLE

that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb
for ever and ever ".

We will now endeavour to follow Science in
her course, noting the echoes that she awakens in
our religious consciousness.

CHAPTER III

RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC RECORD OF CREA-
TION

I. The Right of Hypothesis in Natural
Science

We shall spare ourselves many subsequent re-
petitions if, at the very outset of our glance
at the work of Science, we discuss its right of
hypothesis, that is, its right of advancing theories
upon hitherto undiscovered causes of certain
phenomena, without these theories having been
beforehand proved to be correct.

Science is often reproached with working far
too much on mere hypotheses, and many people
are of opinion that they can with this reproach
speedily dispose of the frequently surprising results
of scientific research or at least invalidate these
results. This reproach is justified only in so far as
it warns Science not to treat unproved hypotheses

as if they were already proved, and not to posit

45

46 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

them as actual laws or facts before it is really
known whether they are laws of immutable validity
or indeed facts at all. But the reproach is un-
justifiable when it is kitended to forbid Science
advancing hypotheses and working with them as
a basis.

Hypotheses are absolutely indispensable for re-
search in every branch of Science, and especially
in Natural Science which more than any other
perhaps is surrounded by unsolved problems. In
the most extensive region of scientific research,
the region of cosmic physics, there are some hypo-
theses of which the man of science is conscious
that while they have been no more than mere
hypotheses they have proved quite indispensable
for his discoveries.

Such hypotheses are the existence of ether, of
the atom, of the molecule.

No one can perceive these substances in any
empirical way (that is " by experience "), and yet,
without taking these for granted, the most import-
ant work and noblest triumphs of Science would
be impossible.

Beyond a doubt the most important discoveries
and advances in our knowledge would never have

RECORD OF CREATION 47

been made at all if the pioneers in knowledge
had not at first worked with hypotheses.

This might be proved at every step of progress
in our knowledge of Nature, but it is enough
to indicate the evidence of some examples which
are evident even to amateurs in scientific re-
search.

The Ptolemaic system of the Greek and Roman
science was a hypothesis which assumed that the
heavenly bodies revolved in the world of space
just as they seem to do to the inhabitants of the
earth.

According to this theory, the earth was the
fixed and central point of the Universe.

This hypothesis was fairly adequate for calculat-
ing the movements of the heavenly bodies and
the eclipses of sun and moon, and mathematical
calculations of great accuracy were accomplished
by the astronomers of antiquity; but the hypo-
thesis could not explain these movements.

No doubt, when Copernicus (1473-1543) opposed
the Ptolemaic system of the universe with that
system which forms to-day the foundation of our
knowledge of the universe, the latter, when it first
rose before his mind, was also a mere hypothesis.

48 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

But this hypothesis held its ground. It furnished
so admirable and satisfactory an explanation of all
the motions which we perceive in the heavenly
bodies, that this view of the universe, in spite of
the opposition of the Church and of many en-
lightened men of science, such as Bacon of Veru-
lam, far outstripped the dignity of a mere theory ;
it soon became a scientific axiom and postulate,
a truth which in itself needed no further proof,
because it was entirely capable of explaining all
the phenomena that came in its way — phenomena
which otherwise would have remained inexplicable.

Let us take another instance. When attention
was first directed to fossils, they were thought to
be freaks of Nature, accidental inorganic pictures
in stone.

This was a hypothesis ; but it proved useless and
untenable, because the resemblance between the
structure of the fossils and the structure of the
living organisms was far too great to admit of
the explanation that they were merely accidental.
Then another hypothesis was taken up ; it was
assumed that fossils were relics and traces of
animals and plants that had disappeared.

This hypothesis proved to be correct, but it fell

RECORD OF CREATION 49

into disrepute and suspicion owing to the further
hypothesis which proved untenable, namely, that
the fossils were the relics and traces of the animal
and plant world that had passed away with the
Flood.

This sub-hypothesis came before the world in
the beginning of the eighteenth century and as-
sumed such a palpable shape that the Swiss
scientist Scheuchzer believed that in the skeleton
of a giant salamander which was found in the
famous Middle Tertiary strata of Oningen on the
Rhine, between Constance and Schaffhausen, he
had discovered the skeleton of a man who had
been drowned in the Flood ; whereupon he wrote
a learned treatise entitled Homo Diluvii Testis, " A
Human Witness of the Flood".

When this untenable hypothesis was first given
up and when people began to see in the fossil re-
mains (supported by other results of Geology) the
records of the history of a slow and gradual de-
velopment of plants and animals, then the former
hypothesis revived, namely, that the fossils were
the remains of submerged plants and animals.
This has become a postulate of Science which no

one any longer doubts, and from this postulate,

4

50 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

which could only arise in the shape of a hypothesis,
one gets a magnificent and wonderfully ordered
world, endowed with many varieties of life, pos-
sessing a pre-adamite history which has developed
through long periods of time and which reaches
down to our own day. This conception is now the
common property of almost all educated people.
Every geological cabinet displays these wonders
of Creation in astonishing variety and order.

By these surprising and yet indisputable results
of science the scientific man finds himself con-
fronted with a number of new questions. How is
one to explain the origin of the living and organic ?
Or the origin of the different species of plants and
animals up to Man ? Or their differences, their
resemblances ? Or the chronological order of their
appearance ?

None of these questions has been settled by
indisputable facts. If a scientific man desires
to give an answer, or an approximate answer,
to these questions, he must assume an hypo-
thesis.

So long as one thinks that everything actually
incomprehensible, or hitherto regarded as incom-
prehensible, shows a greater dependence upon God,

RECORD OF CREATION 51

if it has been called into being by immediate
creative activity apart from any intervening natural
causes, so long will one be inclined in the interests
of religion to forbid scientific research into original
causes or to suspect Science of being irreligious.
But whoever regards the universe (and this is our
view) with all its energies and laws as a work of
God who created, sustains and rules it — for such a >
man, when he is once really in earnest, the Divine
causality will not be affected one hairbreadth by
the discovery of the natural causes of a pheno-
menon, any more than if the phenomenon had no
natural causes. For in the one case, as much as
in the other, it is the work of God. A thoughtful
student will always be careful of the use he makes
of a hypothesis. He will abandon it if it be
proved useless, or when it does not satisfy the
facts which it takes for granted ; but he will not
allow such experiences to keep him from starting
new hypotheses and examining them in the hope
that they may serve to win a satisfactory explana-
tion of the phenomena.

In his " Meditations of a Wanderer " (" Betrach-
tungen im Sinn der Wanderer"), in the second
book of Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahren, Goethe

52 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

has nobly expressed this right of hypothesis in
these words : " Man must abide by the belief that
the incomprehensible is comprehensible, or else he
would cease to investigate ".

II. Astronomy, Cosmic Physics, and Chemis-
try in Relation to Christianity

The appearance of the work De Revolutionibus
Orbium Coelestium which Copernicus published in
the year of his death, created a revolution in the
ideas that educated persons entertained of the
world and its contents. The greatness of this
revolution one can hardly overestimate.

The volume was limited indeed to the earth and
solar system, but people soon saw the weighty
conclusions which were to be drawn from this
new idea of the world ; what had been dis-
covered about the position of the sun and its
planets, with their satellites, was extended to the
whole starry world and all inhabited space, and
this produced a perfectly new view of the world,
vastly different from what had hitherto obtained.

According to the so-called geocentric view of
Ptolemy of Alexandria {circa 140 b.c.), the earth

RECORD OF CREATION $$

was the central point of the universe — the sun,
moon and stars being lights in the firmament, the
motions of which could be perceived and calculated,
but the nature of which was entirely unknown.
With all this ignorance about the nature, con-
tents, and extent of the world of space, imagina-
tion had full liberty to conceive the heaven of
religion, i.e. the sky above our heads, as the abode
of the glory of God and as the distant goal of the
Christian hope, as if it were a kind of upper, though
still invisible, continuation of the firmament.
There was also ample opportunity for portraying
the glories of this heaven with all kinds of pictures
drawn from the imagination. This Ptolemaic geo-
centric view of the world was now replaced by the
Copernican heliocentric view, according to which
the earth is only one of the planets that circle
round the sun, while the sun and not the earth is
the middle point of the Solar System, which is
itself again but a small part of the universe ; every
fixed star is itself a sun, and space is of quite im-
measurable extent.

Now for religious knowledge and religious ideas
this revolution in the knowledge of the universe
was of incalculable importance. This may perhaps

54 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

be best formulated in the briefest manner by stating
a fact which for our religious faith is so important,
namely, that the difference between the visible and
invisible has been changed from what was a quan-
titative difference under the reign of the Ptolemaic
system into what is a qualitative difference under
the system of Copernicus. The earth with its
inhabitants is not thereby brought nearer nor
removed farther away from heaven than the
farthest fixed star that can be reached with a
telescope.

Slowly indeed but with an unceasing triumphal
progress the new science of the universe made
its way. Opposition from the side of Science was
not wanting, as we have already mentioned in the
case of Bacon of Verulam (p. 48). Even the
Swedish Tycho de Brahe (1546-1601) opposed his
own system to that of Copernicus, holding that
the earth is the central point of the universe
and the sun and moon revolve round it, while the
planets again go round the sun. Still stronger
was the opposition upon the part of the Churches,
but strongest and most tenacious of all from the
Roman Catholic Church. The writings of Coper-
nicus from 1616 until 1757 stood on the index of

RECORD OF CREATION 55

books forbidden in the Roman Church ; Galileo
(1564-1642) fell twice into the hands of the In-
quisition, and his works were first removed from
the forbidden list in 1835.

In spite of this the revolution in, and the in-
crease of, natural science produced by the genius
of Copernicus have long become the common pro-
perty of the educated. Moreover the Christian
Churches have appropriated it and acquiesced in
the religious conclusions drawn from the new
knowledge of the universe ; they have introduced
it into their theology, so that on this ground there
is nothing more to be said concerning a conflict
between Natural Science and Christianity, although
Christian children must still pass and perhaps
always pass through the Ptolemaic theory of the
universe before they reach the Copernican.

I am not aware of any system of dogma that
would not thankfully accept and utilise the revolu-
tion (introduced by the Copernican system of the
universe) in our idea of visible and invisible
being, viz., from a quantitative into a qualitative
difference, as an illumination, a deepening, and a
strengthening of its religious knowledge, though
our theological and still more our devotional

56 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

works, where they speak of the invisible world,
could not surmount the difficulties that arise from
the fact that we are totally unqualified to form
any idea of existence apart from the categories
of Time and Space — categories which belong to
this world, while the other world is at present
merely an object of faith and hope and not yet
one of sight.

Thus in the sphere of the relations between Astro-
nomy and Christianity we have to note a positive
gain that Christianity owes to the increase of our
scientific knowledge. Astronomy has helped us
to the knowledge that the category of space (and
time) stretches over the whole universe, that the
extent of this sphere is absolutely incalculable,
surpassing all our ideas of time and space, and
that this vast region is, nevertheless, confined
only to the visible, whereas the heaven which is
revealed as the abode of the Glory of God, the
seat from which God directs the universe in His
Omnipotence, Omnipresence and Omniscience,
and to which He takes His own after they have
left this world, has no place in it at all. Heaven
belongs to quite another and a supernatural cate-
gory of existence, and our ideas of space, whether

RECORD OF CREATION 5?

they be large or small, are irrelevant in this con-
nection. But this Heaven can now be very near or
very far from every human being before he passes
to the World Beyond, in whatever part of the
present world of space he may be situated. This
is shown us at once by the fact that every man,
according to his moral and religious condition,
can have Heaven or Hell within him. Moreover,
there is the experience we have in private com-
munion with God in prayer. Every prayer a
man utters marks an ascension of his inner being
to God; he is convinced that God from His
Heaven, omnipresent in the whole universe, hears
him ; and the Founder of our religion has ex-
pressed this with incomparable beauty, by teaching
us in the Lord's Prayer to address God with the
words " Our Father which art in Heaven ".

From yet another side our religious faith has
reason to thank astronomy for what it has gained.
The Old Testament saint, with the total in-
adequate knowledge of the world possessed by that
age, felt himself compelled to exclaim : " The
heavens declare the glory of God and the firma-
ment showeth His handywork " (Ps. xix. 2).
Every advance we make in our knowledge of

58 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

the universe through astronomy extends our view
of the glory of God and His Almighty Power, and
the deeper and more comprehensive our view has
become of the extent of the universe and the im-
measurable host of the heavenly bodies in all
stages of their development, the fuller is the sound
of the song of praise which to-day rises from our
lips.

In connection with this extension of our view
there is finally a further gain to take into account,
for which religious devotion and reflection are
indebted to science. The contrast between the
smallness of the space occupied by man and the
loftiness of the mental powers of which he is
accounted worthy by His Creator, cannot be re-
cognised in its whole immeasurable extent save
through the increase of our astronomical know-
ledge. Even under the ancient idea of the world
the sense of his own littleness was present with
Man, as he stood before the vastness of which he
was accounted worthy. It forced from him the
exclamation of the Old Testament saint : "When
I consider Thy Heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained ;
what is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? and

RECORD OF CREATION 59

the Son of man, that Thou visitest him ? " (Ps. viii.
3, 4). To what tiny dimensions does the whole
earth shrink, with all its inhabitants and the in-
dividual most of all, when we direct our gaze, with
the aid of astronomy, to the immeasurable uni-
verse with its countless heavenly bodies and from
thence turn to our little earth, to its inhabitants,
and last of all to our own selves ! And yet this
tiny little being called "Man" can rejoice in his
ability to receive the Creator and Lord of the
whole universe into his consciousness, and even to
recognise him as his Heavenly Father, to love
Him, and to have communion with Him.

Cosmic physics and chemistry offer to our reli-
gious knowledge and experience a service similar
to that offered by astronomy, though in a more
limited sense. For while this branch of science
demonstrates the unity of all the laws, energies,
and material of the universe and the heavenly
bodies, including the earth, it thereby strengthens
and completes our reasons for regarding the differ-
ence between the Visible and the Invisible World
not as a quantitative but as a qualitative differ-
ence, providing fresh cause for adoring meditation
on the Omnipotence and Glory of the Creator.

60 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Up till now, the relation between Science and
Christianity in this sphere is evidently quite a
peaceful one. But as soon as cosmic physics ex-
tended with perfect justice the knowledge of the
indestructibility both of energy and matter — which
we had at first discovered by the investigation of
the laws, energies and materials to be found on the
earth — to the laws, energies and material of the
universe, then, indeed, this science became the prin-
cipal armoury from which the atheistic, materi-
alistic, and pantheistic systems took weapons
wherewithal to combat the Christian view of the
world. For this reason we must examine cosmic
physics and chemistry somewhat more closely.

The law of gravitation, the law of the inde-
structibility of matter, and the law of the inde-
structibility of energy are the three basal truths
of which we shall treat.

The three laws of motion of the heavenly bodies
discovered by Kepler (1571-1630) and the law of
falling bodies discovered by Galileo before Kepler,
suggested to the genius of Sir Isaac Newton the
thought of finding the higher unity of both in
gravitation as the universal characteristic of all
matter, from the masses of the greatest of the

RECORD OF CREATION 61

heavenly bodies down to the particles of dust in
the air.

When we are told it was by seeing an apple
fall from a tree that the thought of a universal law
of gravitation throughout space flashed through
the mind of the great scientist, this story illus-
trates better than anything else the greatness and
the scope of the discovery. As regards this tale,
Robert Mayer says in the fifth section of his
Dynamics of the Heavens : " One of the most tre-
mendous enigmas, the problem of the cause of the
irregular course of the planets, Newton solved, and
solved it, so it is said, by meditating on the fall
of an apple. There is nothing improbable about
this, for if one is convinced that between small
and great there is not a qualitative but a quanti-
tative difference, and if one refuses to heed the
whisperings of an ever-vivid imagination and
essays to trace the same laws throughout the
least and the greatest processes of Nature, then
is one on the right way to discover truth. This
universal validity lies in the very essence of the
laws of Nature ; it is a touchstone for the correct-
ness of human theories. We watch the fall of an
apple, and discover that there is a law hidden at

62 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

the root of this phenomenon ; instead of the earth
put the sun, instead of the apple a planet, and—
we have the key to the mechanics of the heavens
in our hands ! "

The second point in the historical succession
of the new science in the sphere of physics and
chemistry was the Indestructibility of Matter, which
we owe to the French chemist Lavoisier (1743-94)-
This fact has become the foundation of all our
modern chemistry, and the enormous strides both
in knowledge and technical achievement which we
owe to this axiom are the best proof of its accuracy.

The familiar meteorites or aerolites, small bodies
that rush through space and every now and then
fall on the earth, contain pure elements, to the
number of about twenty, which occur also on the
earth. No sooner were meteorites first chemically
examined, which was not until the beginning of
last century, than it became necessary to draw con-
clusions about the similarity between the matter
of which the universe is composed and that of the
earth. But the Spectrum Analysis which Robert
William Bunsen and Kirchhoff (1861) brought
jointly before the public in their work, Chemical
Analysis through Spectral Observations, and made

RECORD OF CREATION 63

the common property of science, was the first
thing to bring the chemical elements of the great
heavenly bodies, i.e. of the sun and fixed stars,
within our knowledge. Thereafter one could begin
to speak of a cosmic chemistry. This has raised
the absolute identity of the matter of the universe
and of the earth to an indisputable certainty, al-
though, of course, the possibility is not excluded
that the spectrum may still reveal in one or other
of the heavenly bodies elements which have not
as yet been proved to exist on the earth.

In the year 1842, that is, nineteen years before
the introduction of the Spectrum Analysis, a new
and epoch-making discovery came to light, namely
the knowledge of the Indestructibility of Energy —
a discovery worthy to rank alongside of Lavoisier's
Indestructibility of Matter. There were no less
than six men who independently reached this
discovery, the Germans, Robert Mayer, Holtz-
mann, and Helmholtz, the Frenchman Hirn, the
Englishman Joule, and the Dane Colding ; but
Robert Mayer (1814-78) had the honour of stepping
first before the public with his discovery, and of
stating the vastness of its significance for the whole
range of cosmic physics. The first announcement

64 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

appeared in the small treatise (scarcely ten pages
in length) entitled " Remarks Concerning the
Energies of Inanimate Nature," which Robert
Mayer published in the Annals of Chemistry
and Pharmacy (Wöhler and Liebig) in May,
1842. The second appeared in his Contributions
to the Dynamics of the Heavens in Popular Form.
Both treatises were reprinted in R. Mayer's
Mechanics of Heat. The first-named at its ap-
pearance was scarcely noticed, and when it was
noticed it met with only aversion and ridicule.
Its contents have long since been recognised
as one of the greatest discoveries that has ever
enriched the human mind, directing technical
work into perfectly new and successful paths.
The whole of electrotechnics, for example, rests
ultimately on Mayer's discovery.

This discovery is in its prime elements, as is
the case with all truth, exceedingly simple ; in
fact, now that it has been made and is generally
known, it reminds one, as Mayer himself has
somewhere said, of Columbus's egg. It consists
in the proof that not only matter but also energy
is absolutely indestructible, and that these two
energies, heat and motion (probably all physical

RECORD OF CREATION 65

energies, i.e., the formerly so-called imponder-
ables, light, electricity, and magnetism, with the
forces of chemical processes of combination) vary
mutually according to a constant, measurable rela-
tion, which can be put into numbers and formulae.
This relation (numerically 424 metres, to which
Mayer raised it from the originally accepted
number 365, raised afterwards to 425) is as
follows : The heating of a given weight of water
at i° Celsius (Centigrade) is just the same achieve-
ment as the raising of a similar weight of any
quantity of matter to a perpendicular height of
424 metres. Or vice versa, a weight that from
a perpendicular height of 424 metres, quickly
or slowly, vertically falls, rolls, or is impelled
downwards, produces, mechanically speaking, as
much heat as is required to raise the same weight
of water i° C. This relation is called the Me-
chanical Equivalent of Heat, and this is for Mayer
the Archimedean point from which he draws the
most astonishing and for the most part convinc-
ing conclusions regarding the movements of the
heavenly bodies, the heat of the sun and its causes
and effects, inorganic motions and occurrences,

such as tide and earthquake, currents of air and

5

66 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

water, and the relationship of physical processes
in the body to those of mechanical energy.

Thus we see that universal and unvarying va-
lidity of the laws of iNature throughout time and
space, indestructibility of matter, and indestructi-
bility of energy, are the chief principles by
which Cosmic Physics and Chemistry gain their
great theoretical and practical success ; nor is
there any doubt that they are the very strongest
weapons which are used by the atheistic, material-
istic, and pantheistic systems, or, as (since Häckel's
time) they are rather called, the monistic systems —
in their warfare against the Christian view as a
contemptible Dualism. Have they a right to use
these ? The answer to this question leads us, as
do the systems themselves, far beyond the region of
science and deep into the world of metaphysics.
Hence we shall take leave to answer this question
at the point at which we ourselves have to leave
the region of science, step into the realm of meta-
physics, and speak of the different theories of the
world. At the present stage of our inquiry, when
we are still dealing with pure natural science, it
is sufficient to point to the fact that the very
pioneers to whom we owe the whole present-day

RECORD OF CREATION 67

increase of our knowledge of the world, were al-
most without exception Christians by conviction.
According to Dennert, Lavoisier certainly was in-
different about religion, but it is generally known,
with regard to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton,
and Robert Mayer, that they were Christians.
In the year of Mayer's death (1878) I published
a small treatise on his Christian standpoint, which
proves this from his writings and letters.

Any one who desires to know not only the re-
ligion of leading scientific men, but of scientific
men as a whole, will find a thorough and, for re-
ligion, a surprisingly favourable answer in the little
work of Dr. Dennert, The Religion of Scientific Men
(Berlin, 1901, sixth edition).

I have no need to go further into the Kant-
Laplace hypothesis of the origin of our solar
system, which assumes the solar system to have
arisen from a revolving cosmic mass of vapour in
distant ages and from its products, as well as again
from other revolving fragments, since I have already
stated the religious and Biblical Idea of Creation
and have demonstrated that this in no way ex-
cludes the origin of the individual contents of the
universe by means of intermediate causes. For

68 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

the hypothesis does not extend to the question of
the origin of the whole universe, but confines itself
to the origin of our present-day solar system and
finally to the origin of fixed stars which resemble
the solar system. Thus it does not conflict with
our religious thought and experience. That it
has only the rank of an hypothesis arises from
the fact that while for a long time it enjoyed
an almost universal acceptance as valid, yet, on
the ground of observations made by spectral ana-
lysis, other hypotheses have been set up in opposi-
tion, as for instance that of the English astronomer
Lockyer (born in 1836). Hence, in the region of
astronomy, in spite of the tremendous upheavals
and advances which these sciences have intro-
duced into our conception of the world, and in
spite of the ancient and Biblical idea of the uni-
verse having been actually replaced by the modern,
we can see how nevertheless all is at peace be-
tween Science and Christianity. Nay more, we
may hold that while the modern conception of the
universe has replaced that of the ancients, so far
from having thereby marred the achievements that
have been won in the name of religion, achieve-
ments which mankind has gained under the sway

RECORD OF CREATION 69

of the ancient idea of the universe, it has really
only enhanced and clarified them.

III. The Realm of Organisms on the Earth-
Charles Darwin and His Successors

Returning now from the universe to our earth,
and inquiring into the origin and development of
the realm of organisms and living creatures, we
feel as if we were leaving the firm ground of
assured principles and axioms to set foot on the
uncertain ground of hypotheses.

We shall find that all questions on this subject
are in a very nebulous state. And yet we must
now say " tua res agitur " — the matter turns on
what immediately touches you, for mankind with
its wealth of mental and spiritual life and its ex-
tensive history pertains on its physical side to this
realm of organisms.

Nevertheless all knowledge in this sphere is
not uncertain. Tremendous strides have to be
noted in our permanent knowledge, and the work
being done by men of science is more indefatigable
than ever.

Until about a hundred years ago science had
not as yet approached at all closely the question

70 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

of the origin of different species of plants and animals/
It contented itself with the fact of their existence,
and their maintenance by further reproduction,
but confined itself to the investigation of their
structure and manner of life, and spent all its
keenness of intellect on classification.

Much less, had any one ventured to solve the
problem of the first appearance of Man. The origin
of life itself was only drawn into the circle of
scientific research in so far as it raised the
question whether lower organic forms did not
still spring from the inorganic. This method of
generation was called "generatio sequivoca " or
" spontanea," and there was a strong disposition
to assume such a method of generation. This
hypothesis has long been abandoned, since all
experiments concerning the origin of organisms,
even of the very lowest, traced them back to germs
already in existence.

Several causes combined to keep scientists in
this state of ignorance. The most effective of
all was perhaps the doctrine of the Immutability
of Species, which the Swedish scientist Linnaeus
(1707-78) had brought to a victorious issue.

The question of their origin was thought to be

RECORD OF CREATION 71

solved by the biblical accounts of Creation, accord-
ing to which God had made plants and animals in
their own order and man from the dust of the
earth. Since the biblical idea of the Divine Crea-
tion had not been closely examined, and since the
general opinion was pretty much that this idea
excluded the operation of intermediate causes in
the creation of the different creatures, every close
investigation into the causes of the origin of the
different species seemed to imply an assault both
on the authority of Holy Scripture and on Christian

belief.

But a number of very successful discoveries
gradually made it absolutely imperative for scien-
tific research to examine more closely than before
the question of the origin of the different species
of plants and animals, and of the origin of man.

In the first place, we must mention the results
of geology and palaeontology (the science of pre-
adamite organisms on earth) and the geographical
distribution of plants and animals, together with
those of comparative anatomy. In the second
place there were the researches made into the
embryonic evolutionary history of the individual
types, and the discovery of cells as the original

72 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

unit in all plants and animals. These branches
of pure science all blossomed during the past
century.

It was geology and palaeontology especially
that opened up a world of unimagined wealth,
with a history of pre-adamite plants and animals,
long ago submerged, which went back for countless
millenniums. Ever since Sir Charles Lyell (1797-
1875), the English geologist, discovered and taught
that forces still operative on earth are the key to
past changes, it has been found that thousands
and millions of years must have elapsed ere man
came upon the scene. This gave ample scope for
the imagination to account for the coming and
passing of the different species of plants and ani-
mals. The temporal succession of the strata
which contain organic remains shows on the
whole a distinct ascent from the lower to the
higher, and an ever more marked approach to the
level of present-day organisms on earth, until
finally Man steps into existence as the end and
crown of the earthly creation. The science of the
geographical distribution of plants and animals,
which is still in its infancy, has proved further
that the mainland and the islands of the earth

RECORD OF CREATION 73

are divided into distinct regions, each of which
has its peculiar vegetable and animal forms, and
that the very fauna and flora which are peculiar
to a given region have geological predecessors far
back in the Tertiary Period. These latter are fre-
quently larger than their existing representatives.
It was comparative anatomy, however, which dis-
covered that all organisms, beginning with those
whose remains are found in the oldest forma-
tions and ending with extant plants and animals,
not only represent, as a whole, an ascent from a
lower to a higher structure, but that the struc-
tures of the organisms in existence at the present
day are akin to those of the species that have
vanished, and that in the whole animal and veget-
able kingdom there is a wide universal unity of
classification to which plants and animals now ex-
tinct belong as much as do those now in existence.
As a case in point, to show that the Unity of
Classification is correct, we are at liberty to take
the fact that there are so-called permanent types
of species which have been preserved from the
oldest formations in which they are found, up to
the present, entirely or nearly unchanged, e.g.,
among the invertebrate animals the bivalvular

74 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

lingula and terebratula with the cephalopod nau-
tilus, among vertebrates the fish ceratodus and the
reptile hatteria.

It was the Homology of Organs, above all, that
was brought to light by comparative anatomy ;
and this urged the scientific mind to seek for an
explanation of the phenomenon. By the Homo-
logy of Organs we understand the fact that within
one and the same class all the organs, especially
those in the permanent and constituent parts in
the skeleton, are fashioned according to one and
the same type, and vary in accordance with this
type throughout their most widely divergent
modifications. This is especially true of the
spine, where Goethe and Oken recognised long
ago in the skull a modified vertebra. So too, for
example, the hands and feet of a man, the hands
of a monkey, the paws of a beast of prey, the hoof
of a horse, the feet of an ox, the fore-limbs of a
mole, the fins of a whale, and the wings of a bat
down to the smallest bones, all correspond to each
other. They can all be registered with the same
letters; they are "homologous" to the smallest
particular. The perception of this suggested to
scientists like Cuvier, C. E. v. Baer, Agassiz, and

RECORD OF CREATION 75

Richard Owen, the idea of types in the organic
kingdom and of an archetype in the highest class
maintained under all modifications and represent-
ing a plan realised in ever higher differentiations
and ever more highly organic developed modifica-
tions, until, in the case of plants, among the most
highly organic dikotyledon plants having two seed-
lobes, in the case of the animal world, among mam-
mals, and, lastly, in the case of mankind, it has
found its highest and at the same time its most
strongly modified expression. Hence, despite his
aversion to the theory of the Descent of Man,
Agassiz owned: "Man is the goal to which the
whole animal creation has striven, from the first
appearance of the oldest palaeozoic fishes " ; and
Richard Owen, who agreed with the theory of De-
scent, observed : " Man, from the beginning of
organisms, was present as an ideal on earth ".

From yet another side came attempts to ex-
plain the origin of the different species of plants
and animals and also of man, by means of the
descent of higher forms from lower, with the
possibility that this descent was completed by a
gradual evolution. Such were the researches into
the embryonic evolution of animals, and such

76 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

were the analogous researches of botanists. It
would take us too far, were I to attempt to give
a survey of these highly interesting studies. Any
one who wishes to become better acquainted
with the subject will find a useful account in the
introduction to the Handbook of the Comparative
and Experimental Evolution Theory of Vertebrates,
edited by Dr. Oskar Hertwig (Jena, igoi). Weis-
mann in his Lectures on the Theory of Descent and
Reinke in his Die Welt als Tat (" The World as
Reality") also give a helpful survey. Only the
pioneers and founders of the modern theory of
Evolution can be named here : Pander (1794-1865),
and his still more important friend and fellow in
research, Charles Ernest von Baer. Ere ever
Schleiden had proved the cell to be the germ-unit
of all plants (in 1838) and Schwann (in 1839)
had proved it the origin of all animals up to
the most completely developed organism, the
foundation of all modern biological research had
been laid by these two men, who paved the way
for the whole modern theory of Evolution. Pander
in 1817 wrote his Contributions to the History of
the Evolution of the Chicken in the Egg, and Von
Baer between the years 1828-37 published his

RECORD OF CREATION 77

work, Observations and Reflections on the History of
the Evolution of Animals. Of the latter work,
Huxley says that it contains the deepest and
soundest philosophy of zoology and biology that
has ever been given to the world, while Källiker
says : " Von Baer's works may be mentioned
both for the wealth and excellence of their facts
and for the thoroughness and scope of their
general remarks, as the best that the embryo-
logical literature of any age and nation has to
show?\ Herr v. Baer in this work already treats
of the so-called biogenetical law (the law of the
origin of living beings) which subsequently under
Häckel's guidance was destined to play so great a
part in the hands of the followers of Darwin.
Since it seems as if men of science were after
all inclined to confine the application of this law to
the limitations which Von Baer had given it, we
will pause to touch upon this matter for a little.
The biogenetical law, in the form in which the
comparative anatomist John Frederick Meckel
(1781-1833) formulated it, runs thus : " The em-
bryo of higher animals passes through the extant
forms of the lower animals, and the evolution of the
individual animals follows the same laws as those of

78 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

the whole range of animals ". Von Baer discusses
the question in his History of Evolution (vol. i., pp.
199-294), refutes the first part of the assertion, and
limits the resemblance between the steps of the
embryonic development and the extant forms
of the lower animals to this, that the individual
development is an advance from a more general
form to an individual (p. 255), or that the evolu-
tionary history of the individual is the history of
the growth of its individuality in every respect (p.
263). He lays emphasis wholly on the separate
development of the chief types in the animal world.
Among these he distinguishes four, the peripher-
istic or radiated type, the geniculated or longi-
tudinal, the massy or mollusc, and the vertebrate
type.

Thus, about the middle of the previous century,
the idea of explaining the origin of the whole
systematic order of the organic world by means
of a Descent, and possibly by a Development of the
higher forms from lower and closely related forms,
was in the air. At last, with the appearance of
Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, on 24th Nov.,
1859, matters came to a head.

His idea certainly had its forerunners, of whom

RECORD OF CREATION 79

however little notice was taken. Erasmus Dar-
win, the grandfather of Charles, suggested in his
Zoonomia (1794) that species came into existence
by descent and evolution. Etienne Geoffroy St.
Hilaire in 1795 arrived at the same conclusion,
but published it first in the year 1828, and was
thereby in 1830 drawn into the contest, immortal-
ised by Goethe, which was waged in the Academy
at Paris with Cuvier. In this he was defeated.
The next upholder of the idea is Treviranus in
his Biology or Philosophy of Living Nature, which
appeared in 1802 ; then came the most noteworthy
of them all — the Frenchman Lamarck (1744-1829),
who published his views first in 1801, and expanded
them further in his Philosophique Zoologique (1809)
and in his Natural History of Invertebrata (18 15).
He too remained unnoticed until his name was
rescued from oblivion during the great move-
ment initiated by Darwin, when he won high
esteem in the so-called " Neo-Lamarckianism ".
In the year 1844 there appeared in England
an anonymous book, brilliantly written, entitled
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. The
author was unknown till his death, in 1871. He
was the Edinburgh publisher and author, Robert

%

80 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Chambers. The book excited a great deal of
interest, and before the appearance of the works
of Darwin went through ten editions. Darwin,
in the historical sketches which precede his
book on the Origin of Species, ascribes to him the
merit of having paved the way for the accept-
ance of the new teaching in England. Moreover
the Frenchmen Naudin and Lecoq should also be
named, and lastly the German Schaaffhausen,
who in the year 1855 advocated a continuous
evolution of organic forms on earth, and, after the
appearance of Darwin, entered with much zeal
into the problems of the Descent of Man.

Those whose lot it was to live through the
sixties and seventies of the past century can
never forget the intellectual stir caused by the
appearance of Darwin's book on the Origin of
Species. It was at once patent to any one that the
origin of the human species in animal soil must
be the consequence of the new teaching, although
Darwin's book on the Descent of Man only appeared
in 1871. The stir was inevitable. The new views
and ideas to which Darwin gave the chief impetus
were bound to stir men's minds to their very
depths, on scientific, philosophic, and above all

RECORD OF CREATION 81

on religious grounds. Until now there had lain
a great darkness over the question of the origin
of the human race, on which there fell only one
strong ray of light, namely, that from the first
two chapters of the Bible narrative, which tells
us that at the end of the animal creation God
made man in His Own Image and fashioned him
from the dust of the earth. Now suddenly, for
reasons which seemed to become more and more
obvious, man was supposed to have a long succes-
sion of animal ancestors — and to have been called
into existence from one of these.

It would lead us far beyond the limits of our
present study, even were it possible, if I were to
attempt so much as a partial survey of the flood
of literature which the appearance of Darwin's
work called forth. Still less do I wish to give a
purview of the laborious and detailed studies in
every region of plant and animal life, which the
British naturalist brought to the notice of all the
civilised nations of Europe and America, from his
far-famed country estate in Down.

On the other hand, however, I think it due to

those readers who have only indefinite ideas of

the theory of Darwin and his followers, to briefly

6

82 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

recapitulate its main features and to indicate
the direction of its subsequent developments.

Darwin did not occupy himself with the Origin
of Life and Living Creatures on the Earth. He
began his researches where he had to presuppose
the existence on our planet of living creatures in
their simplest forms, and in the last sentence of
his work on the Origin of Species he takes for
granted that life with all its energies was origin-
ally breathed by the Creator into one or two
forms. Even in the Descent of Man (vol. i., p.
30) he designates questions such as those con-
cerning the origin of life or the development of
mental capacity in the lowest organisms, as prob-
lems for a distant future — doubting if they could
ever be solved by man. The question of the origin
of life, which is so nearly related to Darwin's
theory — was, after the appearance of the Origin
of Species, raised and treated in the most thorough
manner by Ernst Häckel, one of Darwin's most
decided supporters in Germany. Professor Häckel
treats this question in the first of his popular
scientific books, his Natural History of Creation
{Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte), in the thirteenth
lecture, and he returns to the same subject in

RECORD OF CREATION 83

his last work, The Wonders of Life {Lebenswunder).
In both he declares that the question of the origin
of life is finally solved by the modern theory of
Evolution. Häckel starts from the fact that there
are still in existence to-day low forms of ani-
malculse, as, for example, the Monera, which were
discovered by him, which cannot be reckoned
to possess even cells. (They are represented very
clearly on the title-page of his Natural History of
Creation.) In these primitive animalculse neither
the organic matter nor the organic shape nor
the organic movement have anything that does
not belong to the inorganic also. The organic
matter called Plasma or Protoplasm is said to be a
highly albuminous carbon compound, which, one
must suppose, could arise in a purely mechanical
way like all chemical compounds. This supposi-
tion is of course, to begin with, only an hypo-
thesis, and the researches of Reinke and others
have not exactly corroborated it. The latter have
proved that protoplasm is a mixture of numerous
chemical compounds, of which albumen is only a
part. The organic form constitutes no difficulty
to the mechanical theory. This is to be admitted
as soon as organic motion is forthcoming, for the

84 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

organic form is a product of the organic motion.
Yet until now no one has succeeded in proving
even the possibility that the movement of organic
animalculse may have arisen in a purely mechan-
ical way from the movement of the inorganic.
Häckel says that organic motion is in the last
instance to be referred to the qualities of carbon.
He discusses this more closely in the third edition
of his Natural History of Creation (p. 298), as
follows : " In reality, the peculiar chemical and
physical qualities of carbon and especially the
fluidity and the facility of decomposition of the
most elaborate albuminous carbon compounds are
the sole and mechanical causes of the specific
phenomena of motion, by which the organic is
distinguished from the inorganic, and which in
the usual sense of the word are termed Life."
Now Häckel grants that this is only an hypoth-
esis. Yet Fechner's researches (1801-87) seem
to bear heavily against this hypothesis, and as
far as I know they have not as yet been con-
tradicted. (See his Contributions to the Creative
and Evolutionary History of Organisms. Leipzig,
1873.) According to him the critical difference
between the inorganic and the organic consists

RECORD OF CREATION 85

in the method of motion. The molecular portions
of the organic animalculse move in consequence
of an impulse that is renewed from within to
without, in a revolving direction ; but this is not
the case with the molecular portions of inorganic
bodies. How this new rotatory movement has
come into existence remains at present an enigma.
Men of science who, like August Weismann,
are firmly convinced that life can be explained as
arising from inorganic matter and motion, and
who therefore combat the old idea of a special
physical energy, are at one here. Viewing the
movement originated by Darwin they exclaim :
" The great enigma has been solved in our
day — the enigma of how the fittest can arise
without the co-operation of determining purposive
energies " (Weismann, Lectures on the Theory of
Descent, Jena, Fischer, 1902 ; 2nd ed. 1905, vol.
ii., p. 441). And yet the same author (vol. i.
" The Theory of Germinal Plasma, " Lectures 17
and 18) grants that we are completely ignorant
of the most elementary phases in the origin of
life. He says that the germinal plasma (Keim
plasma), i.e., the hereditary substance of the
germ cell, is not a loosely connected combina-

86 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

tion of matter, but a structure, a piece of archi-
tecture, in which definite positions are assigned to
different parts. The forces which assign these
positions — which he designates as vital or elective
affinities — are those which cling to the bearers of
life, the " Biophora," in contrast to the inorganic
molecular particles ; they are inner forces of which
we know nothing more than that they do work —
but of which we have as yet no more detailed or
immediate knowledge. This confession of ignor-
ance must logically take away the chief ground
for the polemic against the existence of a special
life-energy ; it leaves the question still an open
one. In fact recently there has been no lack
of support for the standpoint ; take, for instance,
Bunge, and Driesch in his later works — al-
though he had formerly supported the mechanical
theory of the existence of life. Helmholtz and
Lord Kelvin have advanced the hypothesis that
organic germs were hurled to the earth by Meteor-
stones from other celestial bodies. Yet this bold
and highly improbable hypothesis would not solve
the question of the origin of life ; it would only
remove it farther away to other worlds, and
thereby render it indeed for ever insoluble.

RECORD OF CREATION 87

Let us now return to Darwin's theory. In order
to explain the development of higher species from
lower by natural means, he sets out from two facts.
The one is the fact that all individuals of one and
the same kind, together with all their specific re-
semblances, show, notwithstanding, individual dif-
ferences— that is, the law of individuality or vari-
ability. The other fact is this, that every indi-
vidual has a tendency to transmit all its qualities
to posterity, not only the character of its species,
but also its individual character : this is the law of
heredity.

He now considers man's method in the artificial
breeding of the varieties of domestic animals and
garden plants. The breeder or grower simply
takes those individual types of a class that have
individual qualities which he wishes to retain and
develop in a further direction ; he excludes from
further reproduction those individual types which
do not possess the required characteristics or
possess them only in an inferior degree ; he con-
tinues in the same way with the next generation,
and, by the continual operation of the two laws
above named, he will, after a few generations,
have grown a variety in which the individual

88 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

characteristics have become fixed and common
to all.

It is now of importance to observe whether
nature in its natural selection does not uncon-
sciously act according to the same principles and
attain to the same results as man does with his
artificial, deliberate selection ; and whether it does
not indeed attain results which finally explain the
origin of all organisms, even the highest and most
permanent, from one primitive form or a few
simple primitive forms, according to the principle
of natural selection.

Darwin finds this question answered in the
affirmative, and he arrives at this answer by
means of the following conclusions.

The whole animal and vegetable world pro-
duces infinitely more germs of life than can
possibly exist, and so in the world of organisms
there is a continual struggle for existence going
on. Every individual must force its entrance
into the conditions of its existence against a
number of other individual types both of its own
and of other species.

Those individuals will be more likely to be
victorious, which possess individual characters

RECORD OF CREATION 89

that are more favourable for the continuance of
the individual than are those of the other types.
These characters are reproduced in the next
generation, when there will again be individuals
that have a character favourable for the main-
tenance of the individual in a yet higher degree,
or that add to this advantageous quality yet
further individual qualities which in the struggle
for existence favour the individual type from
another side. This is natural selection through
the survival of the fittest in the struggle for
existence.

Altered conditions of life and environment, and
the adaptation of organisms to the new relations in
shape, colour, nourishment, and habits of life, are
the principal causes of those individual changes,
the accumulation of which through many genera-
tions has so great an effect.

If we have only sufficiently great periods of
time behind us to allow us to imagine every step
of evolution as exceedingly small and almost
unnoticeable, natural selection offers us not in-
deed an exclusive but certainly a preponderat-
ing means of explaining the evolution of the
whole animal and vegetable world from one or at

90 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

most a few of the simplest primitive forms. In
his work on the Origin of Species and in that on
the Variation of Animals and Plants in the cir-
cumstances of domesticity, he casually names
sexual selection also as an important factor in natural
selection. In his work on The Descent of Man, how-
ever, he treats of sexual selection in such detail
that he has even put it into the title of his book.
He ascribes to this a pre-eminent significance in
producing beauty of shape, colour and tone, as
well as in developing energy and intelligence.
Moreover he places the transition from the animal
and human entirely under the law of gradual
evolution and the dominion of natural selection.
It is especially social life and the habits and
instincts of society, through the elevation and
ennobling of which have arisen all the intellectual,
moral, and religious qualities that make man
what he is.

Darwin had to imagine a material foundation
in order to explain the complicated facts of
heredity, reaction, the reproduction of lost mem-
bers, and such like. For this purpose, he sug-
gested in his book on Variations, "The Hypothesis
of Pangenesis". He supposes that the cells of

RECORD OF CREATION 91

which every organism consists, give off particles
of infinitesimal dimensions which circulate freely
through the whole body, and which by dividing
multiply themselves and can subsequently be
developed into cells resembling those from which
they germinate. He names these particles " little
germ cells" or "little germs," "gemmules".
He supposes that these germs in their slumbering
condition have a mutual elective affinity to one
another which brings about their union, either in
the form of buds or of sexual elements, the
two chief means of reproduction with higher
organisms.

This theory, which recalls the hypothesis of
" panspermatismus " that Buffon had already in-
troduced in his Universal Natural History (1749),
found little response, chiefly because it was not
capable of proof. On the other hand, it became
the mother of similar other theories, against which
however the same reproach can be urged. They
are of no importance for our inquiry, because in
their case no religious principle is at stake.

On page 79 we said that about the middle of
the past century the thought of explaining the
origin of organisms by a descent from higher

92 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

forms, which again sprang from closely related
lower forms, was already in the air. We must now
add, after describing Darwin's theory, that even
the idea of natural selection was already current.
Before Darwin's work had appeared, Alfred
Russell Wallace (born 1822), during his travels
in South America, and especially in the Malay
Archipelago, had independently of Darwin come
to exactly the same idea of natural selection ;
but he waived any rivalry with Darwin for the
honour of priority in the discovery, because Darwin
had worked quietly at these ideas longer than
he himself had, and had begun also to collect
materials by way of proof.

Wallace, however, made " Man " an exception to
this method of origin, because he recognised in all
that makes man what he is, not only a quantita-
tive but a qualitative difference from the animal
world. He put man higher. In other respects, as
distinguished from Darwin — and from many Dar-
winians who are more Darwinian than their master
— he held firmly to the exclusive reign of the prin-
ciple of selection in the evolution of the animal and
vegetable kingdom, while Darwin himself, over-
whelmed by the preponderance of facts showing

RECORD OF CREATION 93

that the origin of many important organs was not
to be explained by natural selection, limited the
dominion of the principle of selection. He says in
his Descent of Man (part i., chap. 2) : ''In the earlier
editions of my Origin of Species I perhaps attributed
too much to the action of natural selection or the
survival of the fittest. ... I did not formerly consider
sufficiently the existence of structures, which, as
far as we can at present judge, are neither beneficial
nor injurious ; and this I believe to have been one
of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my
work. ... An unexplained residuum of change
must be left to the assumed uniform action of
these unknown agencies, which occasionally induce
strongly marked and abrupt deviations of structure
in our domestic productions."

Now, in seeking to indicate the various direc-
tions in which Darwin's theory has subsequently
been developed, we again find ourselves con-
fronted with fairly numerous hypotheses. Dar-
win's theory stands before us as an entirely fixed
unity which may be summed up thus : The
various species of organic existences prior to the
appearance of man arose by descent from one
another in gradual evolution, the chief cause of

94 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

this development being natural selection through
the survival of the fittest in the struggle for
existence. To the closely knit unity of this theory,
next to its wealth of data, we must ascribe its
exceptional and rapid success. Yet as soon as
one tries to form any idea of what transpired
at the origin of the first individuals of a new
species, it will be found that this theory contains
in itself three theories, which abstractly or con-
cretely must be kept separate. Each of these
theories requires its special proof, and these proofs
again carry very unequal weight in their power of
persuasion.

The most universal theory, which will maintain
its ascendency when others have partly or entirely
become untenable, is the theory of the origin of
species by means of descent. The second theory
is that of the origin of species by means of descent
along the line of perfectly gradual evolution. This
theory will possibly divide the field with the
theory of a spasmodic descent of species. Its
supporters give this spasmodic descent different
names. Oswald Heer names it, " Reconstruction
of Species " ; Källiker, " heterogeneous produc-
tion " ; Korschinsky, " heterogenesis " ; Hartmann,

RECORD OF CREATION 95

" heterogenism " ; Heinrich Baumgärtner, " muta-
tion of types by means of germ-metamorphosis " ;
Hugo de Vries, "mutation". The third theory
which in the case of Darwin forms the foundation
alike for the theory of descent and for that of
evolution, is the theory of the evolution of species by
natural selection in the struggle for existence.

The question now emerges : " Have we found
in natural selection the motive power of all evolu-
tion, or has it failed to justify itself at all, or
must it divide its authority with other known or
unknown causes of evolution?"

All three theories are certainly as yet mere
hypotheses, and they must, according to their
nature, remain so, for they all occupy themselves
with the explanation of occurrences which took
place before the appearance of man ; many of
them can be traced back innumerable millenniums
prior to his appearance, and are, therefore, in-
capable of direct observation.

And they are hypotheses which differ greatly in
their value.

The most general theory, which may still carry
weight when the two other theories, that of evolu-
tion and that of natural selection, fall to the

96 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

ground, is the theory of the origin of the higher
species from closely related lower species by means
of descent. This theory has fairly taken root. In-
deed, one might say that it has become the
general postulate of all scientific research into
the origin of species. It has a right to this com-
manding position, for it is founded on a series
of undeniable facts, and on conclusions derived
therefrom, whose convincingness is apparent.

The facts are culled from the spheres of geology,
palaeontology, the geological distribution of plants
and animals, as well as from comparative anatomy
and from the evolutionary history of animal and
vegetable types; they have been formulated on
pages 73 f.

The conclusions to which these facts shut us up
are the following : Geology and palaeontology show
us innumerable millenniums in which the animal
and vegetable world has developed in an ascending
scale from its lowest forms up to the appearance
of man. They show us at the same time in a
thousand ways that, apart from the continually
recurring appearance of new forms of organisms,
essentially the same forces which are effective
to-day have held sway through all these periods.

RECORD OF CREATION 97

Comparative anatomy shows us the systematic
connection of all these organisms with extant
plants and animals, reaching up to man himself.
Finally, the history of evolution shows us that every-
thing, even the most highly developed individual in
the animal and vegetable kingdom, has come into
existence by a gradual evolution from the simple
impregnated cell up to the perfect organism.

If we wished now to assume that the first indi-
viduals of a new species had been always called
into existence from the inorganic, apart from any
genealogical connection with the nearest related
type of the preceding species, we should destroy
everything — and that is a great deal — that the
new species had in common with the preceding
as regards its organisation. We should imply
that the Creator or Nature, or by whatever name
we designate the power which calls the new
species into existence, ignored all that this power
had already summoned into being out of what
approximated to the new species, and that it
always began afresh.

Still greater would be the difficulty of giving up
the idea of descent, when we admit the following
consideration.

98 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Experience shows us that individuals of one
species, with the exception of the single-celled and
the lowest existences of all, never come into being
in their developed form but by an embryonic
evolution. According to all analogy, this must
also have been the case with the first individual
of a species. But where would such an embryo
have had its protecting and nourishing covering
except in the uterus of a closely related lower
species ? This is true of all the higher organic
species up to man.

The theory of descent has thus in fact become
the general basis of all scientific research into the
origin of species. I know of but one scientist
who rejects the theory of descent, I mean the
zoologist Albert Fleischmann, in his book The
Theory of Descent, or Popular Lectures on the Rise
and Fall of a Scientific Hypothesis (Leipzig, Georgi,
i goo) and in his subsequent work, The Darwinian
Theory, which appeared in 1903 and was issued by
the same firm. But as he not only seems abso-
lutely to identify the idea of descent with the
idea of gradual evolution, but also proceeds to
adduce reasons which tell against the origin of a
species by natural selection, as reasons contrary

RECORD OF CREATION 99

to the origin of a species by gradual descent, it
is not probable that he either has or ever will
have many followers.

As soon as we accept the theory of descent, how-
ever, a whole host of questions arise which clamour
for some reply.

We begin with that class of questions for which
natural science owes us an answer. Must we con-
ceive the first appearance of organic existences
in such a way as that only a single organic germ
at some time and place came into existence, from
which has sprung up the whole world of organisms,
plants and animals? Or did many germs come
into existence simultaneously ? Were these germs
similar or dissimilar ? And were these the begin-
ning of many similar or dissimilar genealogical
trees ? Must we assume that a spontaneous
generation of the organic from the inorganic took
place only once upon a time, or that in the long
prehistoric age of the Earth, repeated generations
of this kind took place ? How is the origin of
sensibility and free motion to be explained ? Or
the first appearance of self-consciousness and
free self-determination, i.e., the first appearance of
man with the entire wealth of human intelligence

100 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

which has developed from his primitive origins?
The genealogy of proto-cells, which the botanist
of Marburg, Albert Wigand (1821-86), has stated,
we must also reckon among the questions raised
and directly answered by an hypothesis, but by an
hypothesis which is devoid of all proof. This he
does in his work, The Genealogy of the Protocells,
as the Solution of the Problem of Descent, or the
Origin of Species without Natural Selection (Vieweg,
Brunswick, 1872). Wigand refers the descent of
organic existences not to the succession of species
but to the succession of original cells. He regards
them all as living in water. The most primitive
cells contain only the characteristics of the general
organic world, of the animal and vegetable king-
doms in their common elements. From these
original cells were produced by cellular distribu-
tion the original cells of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms ; from the original cells of both kingdoms
those of the principal types ; from these again
those of the classes ; from these lastly the orders ;
from these the families ; from these in turn the
genera, and from these finally the proto-cells of
the species. It was only after the original proto-
cells of the species were produced that these

RECORD OF CREATION 101

developed into the perfect representatives of
species, which then continued to be reproduced
in a way with which we are all familiar.

We will answer all the above-mentioned ques-
tions as Emil du Bois Reymond had to answer
them : " Ignoramus," " We don't know," and per-
haps " Ignorabimus," " We shall never know ".

Another set of questions which the theory of
descent involves is more easily answered, or rather
allows of far greater varieties of possible answers.
Every one of these possible answers has found
some scientific adherents, and the contradiction
or adjustment of these different possibilities is
equivalent to the history of the Darwinian theory
up to the present day. The questions are : " Must
we think of the descent of species in such a
way that the higher species were developed very
gradually from those immediately below them, by
exceedingly small and almost invisible transitions,
as is invariably the case with individual varia-
tions,— so that the theory of descent and of evo-
lution would be identical ? Or did the higher
order of species appear spasmodically in the
region of the closely related lower order? Or
did gradual evolution and spasmodic progress

s

102 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

succeed each other by turn ? And whenever a
new species arose by gradual evolution, what
was the motive power of this evolution ? Was
it natural selection, or were there other forces
concerned, and — if so — what ? Or was it natural
selection in combination or permutation with other
forces ? Finally, where natural selection held
sway, was the individual variation, from which
natural selection always takes its start, undeter-
mined or strictly determinate ?

The conception which has found widest accept-
ance, in answering the above-mentioned questions,
not only among scientists but also among the
uninitiated, is the idea that the theories of descent
and of evolution are identical, and that the theory
of the origin of species by means of descent from
each other means nothing else than that the species
have originated from each other in immeasurably
long periods of time by means of gradual evolu-
tion. This evolution is conjectured to have
happened so gradually that the difference between
two generations is hardly noticeable, while in the
course of millions of years it has extended over
the whole vast realm of organisms, extinct as well
as extant. It is interesting to see over what vast

RECORD OF CREATION 103

spaces of time the imagination thus claims to
sweep. Häckel tells us, in the very first note to his
Riddle of the Universe, that the time during which
there has been organic life on the earth may lie
between the minimum number of 100,000,000
years and the maximum of 1,400,000,000 years.
The minimum number would be divided into
geological periods thus: 1. Archäozoical {Pri-
mordial), the period of the skull-less animals,
52,000,000 years. 2. Palaeozoic {Primary), the
period of fishes, 34,000,000 years. 3. Mesozoic
(Secondary), the period of reptiles, 11,000,000
years. 4. Canozoic (Tertiary), the period of the
mammals, 3,000,000 years. 5. Anthropozoic
{Quaternary), at least 100,000 years = 0*1,000,000.
Let us imagine this era as a day of twenty-
four hours, as his pupil Henry Schmidt has done,
and we get for the Primordial Period twelve hours
and thirty minutes, for the Primary Period eight
hours and five minutes, for the Secondary Period
two hours and thirty-eight minutes, for the Ter-
tiary Period forty-three minutes, for the Qua-
ternary two minutes, while the 6,000 years of
man's civilisation, the so-called " World History "
would occupy but the space of five seconds.

104 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Many circumstances contribute to popularise
very widely the idea that the theories of Descent
and of Evolution are identical.

In the first place it was, as we have seen, the
unbroken unity in which Darwin himself advanced
his theory, which procured for it a welcome.
According to this theory Descent and Evolution
are essentially the same, and the motive power
of evolution is natural selection in the struggle for
existence. Darwin himself grants one important
modification, a modification not granted by all his
adherents — viz., that there are several changes as
yet unexplained ; perhaps also a greater modi-
fication, viz. the possible need of assuming an
operation similar to the operation of those un-
known influences which in domestic propagation
bring to light sharply defined and sudden depar-
tures from the type.

But perhaps in a still higher degree it was in
the interest of the system called Monism, advanced
and eagerly preached by Häckel, to hail a theory
that banished the idea of purpose from Natural
Science and undertook to replace it by the exclu-
sive reign of a mechanically operative Causality.
Consequently almost all who reject a theistic con-

RECORD OF CREATION 105

ception of the world — with the exception of Rudolf
Virchow (1821-1903), who has always urged a pru-
dent caution — rallied enthusiastically round this
theory of evolution, as the freshest and firmest
support and basis of their pantheism, atheism, or
materialism, as the various shades of what is now
called monism were described. Not only Häckel
but all adherents of this monism outdo each other
in their praises of this achievement in science. I
may reasonably pass over the strong language of
Ludwig Büchner, the most popular supporter of
pure materialism; but even monists, who still
leave religion a corner somewhere, are never tired
of praising Causality for its banishment of tele-
ology, i.e. the theory of purpose or tendency in
Nature. I mentioned above, on page 86, Weis-
mann's exclamation, " Our age has solved the
great problem, of how the fittest can come into
being without the co-operation of forces that have
any aim in view ". In his Theory of Descent (vol.
i., p. 63) he remarks: "The philosophic signifi-
cance of natural selection lies in its exhibition of a
principle that has no aim in view and yet brings
about what is fitted to some end ". In volume i.,
page 264, similar words are also to be found.

106 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

The Jena zoologist, Ziegler, takes his stand on
the same ground. In his lecture on the present
position of the theory of descent in zoology, de-
livered on 26th September, 1901, before the Ham-
burg Association of Scientists and Doctors (Jena,
G. Fischer, 1902), page 18, he starts with a
sentence from Häckel's Natural History of Creation.
"When Darwin established the theory of natural
selection by means of the struggle for existence,
he discovered not only the most important cause
of organic formation and recasting, but also the
final answer to one of the greatest philosophical
problems, namely, the question : How can adapta-
tions, fitted to some end, arise mechanically,
without purposive causes ? " Even the Am-
sterdam botanist, Hugo de Vries, who by his
Theory of Mutation (Leipzig, Veit & Co., 1901), made
an opening for the long-neglected theory of a
partially spasmodic descent of species (cf p. 102),
by noting such mutations in the plants of the
Oenothera Lamarckiana, says in section 1, par. 26 :
" The supreme value of the Darwinian Theory
of Selection obviously lies in its reference of
adaptability in the world to purely natural
causes, without recourse to any teleological

RECORD OF CREATION 107

theory. It is to this that the theory of de-
scent owes its universal acceptance at the present
day."

It is evident to every one that the assertion that
the discovery of natural causes excludes the work-
ing of forces tending or striving to a purpose,
passes beyond the region of Natural Science far
into that of philosophy. We do not entirely
blame this encroachment into the philosophical
and more especially into the metaphysical sphere.
Every scientist needs a coherent theory of the
universe, and as Natural Science is not sufficient
of itself to form such a theory, he has to call
philosophy to his aid. Moreover we hold that
philosophy to be the more fertile which rests, as is
the case with our modern works of philosophy, on
scientific observations, rather than a philosophy
which constructs Nature out of metaphysical
principles, as was that of Schelling, Steffens
and Hegel, and recently also of Karl Planck.
But as peace between Science and Christianity
reigns in the sphere of pure Natural Science, war
really beginning when we enter the domain of
philosophy, we must not examine more closely at
present this denial of the existence of forces that

108 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

have an aim ; our present business is to survey
the progress of Darwinian research.

The order of succession in our account of these
theories leads us now from the theory of descent
to the theory of evolution. This has a number
of facts to adduce on its behalf, but they all
indicate the possibility, even the probability, that
gradual evolution and spasmodic appearance of
new qualities are alternate. When the question
arises whether the world of organisms has one
or more genealogical trees, the theory leaves
us, as we have already shown, entirely in the
lurch.

It is ontogeny, above all, the theory of the origin
of individuals by gradual evolution, which is fa-
vourable to the theory of evolution. The higher
organisms all arise by an entirely gradual evolu-
tion in almost unnoticeable transitions from the
impregnated egg, which represents a single cell,
up to the completed organism, or — in the vege-
table kingdom — from single-celled seed-kernels to
the perfect plant. But even in the life-story of
the embryo there is a varied succession of more
and less productive periods, so that if the know-
ledge of "ontogeny" were to be regarded as the

RECORD OF CREATION 109

key to our knowledge of " phylogeny," i.e. the
origin of the whole stem of any species, order,
or class, much will point to the probability that
gradual development in a species, kind, etc.,
alternates with the abrupt appearance of new
qualities.

This probability has been made a certainty by
the discoveries of palaeontology. Several creatures
in the past ages of the world have such a wealth
of species and show so many forms of transition,
that they suggest a transition into each other by
an entirely gradual evolution — e.g. the ammonites
and several snakes, the countless species of the
"helix," the famous "valvata," or the " plan-
orbis" from Steinheim near Heidenheim. But
in ithe overwhelming majority of cases, such
gradual transitions of species are not to be
found. Several families, e.g., the " trilobites,"
a kind of "crustacean" of the old Silurian and
Devonian periods, appear suddenly only to vanish.
Moreover, while extremely close successions of
fossil mammals, such as the forerunners of the
horse, prove a descent of one species from another
quite irrefragibly, they are nevertheless far from
proving any perfectly gradual evolution ; they

110 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

seem rather to point to spasmodic approximations
to the present day form of a horse.

Even were the origin of the entire organic
world to be referred to a single genealogical tree
by means of a perfectly gradual evolution, Natural
Science is still far from providing a clue to this
region of facts, although hypotheses in this sphere
have been rampant and still are so to-day. It is
to be noted, especially, that transitions of whole
classes or whole types from one to the other have
hardly been found anywhere. Häckel's attempt,
e.g. to make the invertebrates come into exist-
ence from the tunicaries by way of evolution from
an ascidian larva to the lowest order of fish,
the amphioxus, which he regards as the original
mammal, is now pretty generally abandoned.
In reality the discovery of the kidney in the
amphioxus by Boveri made a genetic bridge be-
tween it and the articulata (August Pauly). And
indeed, more recently, facts have been brought to
light by Oskar Jäckel in Berlin, which suggest
the land rather than the old idea of the sea as
the mother of all living things, and raise the
question whether the more highly developed sea-
creatures, from the fish upwards, did not betake

RECORD OF CREATION 111

themselves once upon a time from the land to the
water. In short, in this and similar questions,
owing to the increasing wealth of material at
our command, we are more than ever inquirers
and still very far removed from the goal of dis-
covery.

If we turn now to the theory which formed for
Darwin himself the chief ground of his concep-
tion of descent and evolution, viz. the theory of
natural selection, we find also that, while it is
not without support from facts in the course of
Nature, the range of these facts is much narrower
than that of the theory of evolution. How
simply the protective colour of many animals that
take the colour of their surroundings is explained
by the theory of natural selection ; how simply
also the striking features of many blossoms
in form, colour, and smell, by which they attract
insects and make possible, by crossing, the more
favourable fructifying of plants for reproduction !
How simply does this theory explain the grace-
ful mimicry i.e. the protective resemblance of
certain kinds of animals in form and colour to
branches and leaves of the plants on which they
feed, or to kindred animals among whom they

112 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

live, which cannot be eaten by other animals and
therefore are exposed to no peril !

Moreover many differences in kindred species,
connected with the position and climate of their
habitat, may be explained by natural selection.
Yet here too it must combine with, even when
it has not to succumb to Lamarck's theory of
the adjustment of organs by their use or dis-
use, unless Weismann's hazardous theory of the
non-hereditability of acquired qualities is to be
accounted correct.

These limits perhaps exhaust the applicability
of the principle of natural selection. The lines of
progress in the organic world, which are not to
be explained alone by natural selection, are much
vaster and of greater import. There are, com-
paratively speaking, very numerous and systematic
characteristics of species and of some of the higher
orders, which are of no use whatever to the
individual member. These cannot possibly have
been summoned into existence by selection alone.
Other lines of progress in organisation are again
of the greatest use to individuals, but not until
they attain a highly developed and effective stage,
e.g. the extremities of the vertebrates, which, in

RECORD OF CREATION 113

their first and small beginnings could only hinder
the individual. Finally the free cross-breeding of
individuals must always have continued to hinder
the further development of species, especially as
they reproduced themselves in diverging direc-
tions.

Hence, soon after the appearance of Darwin,
criticism became more and more persistent in
declaring natural selection to be inadequate for
solving the origin of species. The most important
of these critiques is that of K. E. von Baer's
treatise on Darwin's teaching in his Studies in
the Sphere of Natural Science (St. Petersburg,
Schmitzdorff, 1876), together with three volumes
by Albert Wigand, Darwinism and the Scientific Re-
searches of Newton and Cuvier (Brunswick, Vieweg,
1874, 1875, 1877).

At first, however, the inadequacy of the theory

of natural selection led to modifications which

were intended not so much to supplement the

operation of selection by means of other agencies

as to heighten its significance. Thus, Moriz

Wagner (1813-87) advanced the theory of Isolation

by Migration and applied it especially to the origin

of man. The Englishmen, Romanes and Gulick,

8

114 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

tried to develop this theory further, founding on
their observation of many peculiar species to be
discovered in far-off islands. It was especially
Gulick who discovered, by his observations on one
of the Sandwich Islands, variations in the repro-
duction of snails found there, and based upon that
his theory of physiological selection. He set this
as a new factor by the side of the previously
discovered factors of natural selection combined with
isolation.

It was soon found that Darwin's theory of
natural selection, and Lamarck's theory of the
continuous evolution of organisms by the use
or disuse of organs, in adaptation to their environ-
ment, were to a certain extent contradictory.
Like his contemporary, Herbert Spencer, Darwin
had innocently accepted the operation of both
principles. August Weismann, on the other hand,
denied the capacity of transmitting inherited
qualities, and thus rejected the explanation of
Lamarck. Hence arose the group of Neo-Dar-
winians, who, more Darwinian than Darwin him-
self, explain natural selection as the exclusive
principle of the reproduction of species, and also
the group of Neo-Lamarckians, who, while ad-

RECORD OF CREATION 115

mitting a co-operation of natural selection, find
the causes of the higher evolution of organisms
in Lamarck's rather than in Darwin's principles.
v At the head of the Neo-Darwinians stands
August Weismann. As the theory of selection
between mature individuals does not explain the
progress of a species, he transfers the power of
selection to the germ, attributing this selection
to the quantitative differences in the nourishment
of the germinal particles — which are well-organised
life-bearers or Biophora, and which he designates
Determinants, because they determine the develop-
ment of the organs. He calls this, germinal selec-
tion ; then he proceeds to postulate a personal
selection among the varying individuals that have
thus arisen. By the united co-operation of the
original germinal selection and the personal selec-
tion which follows it, the evolution of the organic
world on an ascending scale is held to be possible.
In spite of all the practical knowledge and acute-
ness of the originator of the germinal selection
theory, it is very doubtful, however, if a hypothesis
so elaborate — the basis of which, namely, germinal
selection, rests on hypotheses which ever evade
observation, and the dominant aim of which is

116 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

the elimination of purposive causes — has any
fruitful future for science.

As an eminent supporter of the Neo-Lamarck-
ians, we may name the Viennese botanist Richard
von Wettstein. In his lecture at the Carlsbad Na-
tural Science Congress (26th Sept., 1902) on Neo-
Lamarckism and its Relation to Darwinism (Jena,
Fischer, 1902), he upheld the idea that it was
quite impossible to explain the formation of all
new forms in one and the same manner, and that
therefore both the Lamarckian and the Darwinian
attempts at explanation had equal justification.
But for the explanation of the gradual rise in
organisation, the Darwinian principle of selection
seemed to him insufficient. What was required was
the direct adaptation-of organisms to their environ-
ment, as is taught in Lamarckism. What is
perhaps the most important stage in the evolu-
tion of the vegetable world, the transition of the
" algae" to the fern and shave-grass, developing
through moss, becomes intelligible to us only
when we accept the gradual adaptation to land-life
of plants adopted for water, during this stage of
evolution. Thus it is that modern research into
the lower stages of the pre-adamite vegetable world

RECORD OF CREATION 117

makes a transition of plants from water to dry
land probable, while, as we saw above, scientists
are to be found to-day who are inclined to think
that in the case of mammals there must have
been in earlier times a transition of the more
highly developed animals from dry land to water.
Thus everywhere we encounter speculation — no-
where do we set foot on certainty.

Finally, in our account of Darwin's teaching,
we come to the fundamental point of his theory
of selection, to the fact that all individuals of a
species vary, to what is called individual variability.

Here we see ourselves confronted with the
question whether this variability is to be regarded
as accidental and aimless, or as in part definitely
determined.

Darwin himself, at the conclusion of his work
on the Variation of Animals and Plants , expressed
himself as inclined to regard this variability as
aimless, but concluded his argument with the
following words: "On the other hand an Omni-
potent and Omniscient Creator orders and fore-sees
everything. This brings us face to face with a
difficulty just as insoluble as that of Free-will or
Predestination."

118 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Of course all those scientists to whom the
special value of Darwin's teaching lies in his
elimination of the operation of determining causes
from the universe, are in favour of the theory of
an aimless variability. Similarly all those scientists
who admit the operation of purposive causality
in nature, advocate a variability which is deter-
minate and in accord with an upward development
of life. K. E. von Baer deserves special mention
as an upholder of the theory of tendency and
purpose in the organic world. Moreover the
botanist Nägeli (1817-91) assumes a definitely
determined power of variation, which, according
to a definite standard, is striving after fulfilment.
Therefore, in contrast to the Selection theory, he
calls his theory that of Direct Production, and
finds the inner causes for this definitely directed
variability in the molecular forces immanent in
the particular substance.

Among the present-day supporters of a de-
finitely determined variation, we must first of all
mention the botanist Reinke of Kiel, whose epoch-
making book, The World as Reality, appeared in
1899 (Berlin, Paetel). Just as twenty or thirty
years ago Wiegand's book on Darwinism was

RECORD OF CREATION 119

the first great, compact, and successful attack on
Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, the influence
of which was then greatly over-estimated, so to-
day Reinke's work stands out as a turning-point,
which again paves the way for a frank recognition
by Natural Science of operative teleological forces,
and opposes that attempt to eliminate the spiritual
element from Nature, which as The Mechanical
Conception of the Universe still holds sway over
so many minds. Reinke starts with the com-
parison of an organism to a machine. In a
machine, those physical and chemical energies
which operate in matter, only achieve the pur-
pose which the machine has to serve when they
are controlled and guided by an intelligent power
Similarly a living organism is only adapted to
its ends by its physical and chemical energies
being under the control and direction of an
intelligent power. These intelligent energies in
organisms he calls : " Dominants ". On page 452
ff. he says : "I distinguish in Nature intelligent
forces as the ruling, and energetic forces as the
subordinate, agencies. The world consists of
1 Energies ' and ' Dominants '. Physics is con-
cerned solely with ' energies,' Physiology with

120 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

'energies' and 'dominants,' Mental science only
with ' dominants ' and what they produce. In the
union of ' dominants ' with ' energies,' we discover
a spiritual element in Nature. My scientific creed
culminates in this conception." On page 440, he
observes : " Plants and animals are organised
according to the circumstances in which they
are situated, and herein we must recognise intel-
ligence. Hence I have explained that intelligence
in the sense of a Universal Reason must be the
cause of organic adaptation."

A further and important symptom of the revolu-
tion now proceeding in the conceptions of the
universe held by scientists, is to be found in
a lecture delivered by the Munich zoologist,
Dr. August Pauly, on the 15th of March, 1902 ;
the subject is Truth and Falsehood in Darwin's
Teaching (Munich, Reinhardt, 1902). He starts
with the idea that the causal feature, on which
Darwin's Theory of Selection is built, cannot ac-
count for adaptability, and yet adaptability is
the character of all organic productions in three
ways : (1) in physiological functions, (2) in the
anatomical structure of organisms, and (3) in the
actions of animals and men. Now adaptability

RECORD OF CREATION 121

attains its end only by means of discrimination,
that is, by means of intellect. It is only a dis-
criminating principle that can, in a definite set of
circumstances, solve any problem. In the principle
of discrimination, — as opposed to accident, which
cannot accomplish anything and yet ex hypothesi
has to accomplish everything — we have a potency
that seems adequate to every emergency, if only
we can succeed in proving its sway in the two
spheres that are withdrawn for the most part from
the immediate influence of our intellect, viz. in
the physiological functions and in the anatomical
construction of organisms. Pauly now tries to
lead this proof, choosing certain crucial examples :
e.g., especially the act of seeing in the physiological
department, and, in the anatomical structure of
organisms, the marvellously designed " tectology "
of the Fibro-spongice, as illustrated by Meyer and
Culmann. The delicate fibres that fill up the
interstices of their bony structure are not irregu-
larly thrown together, but are adapted to pull and
pressure with a perfection such as human technique
cannot in the remotest degree attain in its build-
ing operations. The result is that the skeleton is
made as lightly and firmly as possible, and indeed

122 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

with a homogeneity of structure which cannot be
acquired by natural selection ; it shows a direct
and original purpose in the structure. The logical
sequence of thought leads us still further to recog-
nise a discriminating activity, that is a psycho-
logical or psycho-physical principle, not only in the
functions and anatomy of organisms, but also in
a sphere outside the organic, viz. in the inorganic,
since in atoms and molecules perception and dis-
crimination could not arise unless the former had
in themselves the previous conditions necessary
for such. Hence Pauly closes with these words :
" Darwin's answer to the question concerning the
origin of adaptability made the order of the universe
a plaything of chance ; an analysis of the principle
of discrimination will refer it to a progressive
order of physics, in which the laws of psychology
clash with those of reason. That is the picture
we have of our future philosophy."

It is highly gratifying to see that scientists
ike Reinke and Pauly, enriched with the results
of the most recent researches in the sphere
of biology, turn back, for all their increased
knowledge, to recognise so emphatically a teleo-
logical principle working in Nature. ' For this,

RECORD OF CREATION 123

Karl E. von Baer had paved the way. He
had already in 1834 (Addresses and Essays, vol. i.,
p. 71, St. Petersburg, 1864), spoken his mind on
the subject. " The earth,'' said he, " is only the
seed-bed on which the mental inheritance of man
shoots and spreads, and the history of Nature is
only the history of the continuous victory of mind
over matter. This is the root idea of creation, for
the pleasure, nay, for the furtherance of which she
causes individuals and generations to vanish, and
raises the present upon the scaffolding of an im-
measurable past." Thirty-two years later, in his
treatise : " On Design in the Processes of Nature "
(Addresses, etc., vol. ii., p. 105, St. Petersburg,
1873), he professes exactly the same views, and
again ten years later in his treatise : " On Ten-
dency and Purpose, especially in Organic Bodies "
(Addresses, vol. ii., pages 228 f.), he sums up his
view of tendency and purpose in Nature with
these words: ''Harmony in Nature, i.e., regular
and reciprocal relationship in Nature, is explained
according to our view by its aims and by its laws
considered as means to the attainment of the
same. To pursue an object, aim, or purpose,
and to select the adequate means, this we call

124 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

reason. ... If this application of the word
' reason ' is correct, we must finally affirm either
that all Nature works reasonably, or that she is
the emanation of Reason, or — if we think of the
original basis of all activity as bound up with
our own Nature — that all Nature is reasonable."
We have now come to the end of our survey of
the history of the Darwinian theories, only to find
ourselves confronted by the fact — which is certainly
unparalleled in the history of science — that a
scientist and discoverer led his fellow-scientists
on to a perfectly new track, where they willingly
followed him, but that the firmest foundation
which he thought he had found for this new track,
has proved itself inadequate. It is Darwin's lasting
merit to have helped to bring to light the idea of
an origin of the higher species by descent from
closely related lower species, and to have made
this the starting-point for all research within this
sphere. On the other hand the theory with which
Darwin tried to explain, primarily, the evolution
of the lower species into higher, viz., the theory of
natural selection, plays only a subordinate part, in
the judgment of most men of science — with the
exception of the Neo-Darwinians — and is unable

RECORD OF CREATION 125

to explain what is most significant in the ap-
pearance of new and more highly developed species
and forms. " Furthermore, the question whether a
gradual evolution or a spasmodic progress called
the higher species into existence, is still an open
one, and the probabilities are that both methods
operate in turn. But as for the causes of each
new advance, whether an entirely new species was
brought into being from time to time, or whether
only capacities already in use but hitherto un-
employed were recovered, and, if so, by what
impulse they were recovered — all this lies still
veiled for us in impenetrable darkness.

IV. The Appearance of Man

We have already had repeated occasion to show
that the possibility, and in fact the probability,
bordering upon certainty, of an animal descent
for humanity, has to be considered purely as a
matter of inference. But for us the question is
of such importance that we shall treat it in a
special section.

It is a question which has naturally stirred
people's minds in the deepest possible manner
ever since the first attempts were made to ap-

126 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

proach the history of creation from the side of
science. But hitherto the questions have out-
numbered the answers. Neither concerning the
bodily and mental character of the first men, nor
concerning their descent, nor concerning the age
of the human family or their original home, have
we any reliable information ; all we have is more
or less well-founded conjecture.

That man as regards his physical nature is
related to the animal world and represents the
uppermost and highest stage in the order of
mammals, and that even the life of the human soul
has its preparatory stage in the soul of animals,
is a fact which has long been recognised. But
since men began, on Darwin's initiative, to ex-
plain the relationships of organisms by descent
of the one from the other, the question of a de-
scent of mankind from the animal world has
pushed its way into scientific discussion. Very
many reasons have been found for thinking such
a descent probable.

We have already, on page 98, referred to the
fact that one cannot avoid the supposition that
the first individuals of higher species came into
existence not in fully developed form but through

RECORD OF CREATION 127

an embryonic development, and that these em-
bryos cannot have had their protecting and
nourishing mantle except in the womb of one of
the most nearly related of the lower species.
Moreover the embryonic evolution of the present-
day human individual is very closely related to
the embryonic evolution of the higher mammals.
Further the numerous rudimentary organs in man
are organs which in the higher animal world to-
day are still active. The manifold resemblance of
the human body to the body of the more highly
developed apes — which on account of this re-
semblance are called anthropoid, i.e. apes re-
sembling man — has rendered it probable that
man has a parent common with these ; whilst
the great difference between them makes it again
probable that he is no direct descendant from one
of these anthropoids, but comes from a common
parent from which the anthropoid apes have
branched off as a lower offspring on the animal
plane, whereas man has progressed in a higher
evolution, bearing within him the self-conscious
mental life.

There are in existence to-day four kinds of
anthropoid apes.

128 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Two are to be found in Asia, the gibbon, and
the orang-utan (not as one often sees it written
" orang-utang " orang-utan means " woodman " ;
" orang-utang " would mean something different
and absurd) ; two in Africa, the gorilla and
the chimpanzee ; none in the New World. The
gorilla, in spite of his comparatively short arms,
is the furthest from man, the chimpanzee the
nearest.

Professor Branco, of Berlin, on whose authority
I make these statements, has discussed the ques-
tion of the descent of man with special thorough-
ness in his treatise on the teeth found in the
Swabian pea-ore, which resemble human teeth
(The Annual Journal of the National Scientific
Society, Würtemberg, pp. 1-144, 1898), together
with his Hohenheim programme on the teeth of
mammals, which has also appeared as a special
work (Schweizerbart, Stuttgart, 1898). The bodily
difference between man and the ape is seen not only
in the greater capacity and more numerous con-
volutions of the human brain, and in the shape of
the skull, but especially in the formation of the
extremities. The ape is a four-handed creature,
man a two-handed. The skeleton of the human

RECORD OF CREATION 129

foot is so different from the skeleton of the hand
on the hinder extremity of the ape that it is im-
possible for the hand to have evolved into a foot ;
we must presuppose another origin for the upright
human gait, together with the free use of both
hands. K. E. von Baer has laid special stress on
this in his treatise on Darwin's theory.

Similarly with the mental life of Man compared
with that of the animals, especially with that of
the higher animals ; there is no lack of an ex-
tensive relationship, but the difference is still
more serious.

The mental life of animals, especially of the
higher animals, has an exceptional amount in
common with that of man. Not only are the
sensations of appetite and aversion and the im-
pulses of desire and avoidance common to both,
but animals possess also, in a high degree, memory,
understanding, and reflection. Moreover the qua-
lities and emotions that demand ethical treatment,
are frequently common to both men and animals ;
we have merely to mention on the one hand de-
pendence and love, gentleness, sociability and
readiness to help, and on the other, envy, hate, un-
sociableness, anger and fear. These and similar

130 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

qualities of the soul, good as well as bad, are often
so distributed in the animal world that each of
them has its special characteristic reproduced in
an animal, and it is from the observation of this
that the animal fables and the animal epic of Rey-
nard the Fox have arisen.

So great is the relationship between the mental
life of man and animals that even what separates
man from animals, viz., his self-conscious and
freely determining spirit, rests upon a certain con-
dition and basis in the very inner life common to
the animals and man. Rudolf Otto in his valu-
able book, Naturalistic and Religious Views of the
World (p. 260; Tübingen, Mohr, 1904), calls this
inner life the raw material of the spirit. He says
(p. 259) : " Psychical capacities are in themselves
simply raw products. In the possibility of raising
them to the level of mind, and of turning the raw-
product to its proper use, lies the absolute differ-
ence and impassable gulf between man and
animal."

This far-reaching relationship between the mind
of man and that of the animals has become a criti-
cal matter for scientific research. Most naturalists
pass by with astonishing ease what specifically

RECORD OF CREATION 131

separates the life of the human spirit from the
animal and first makes man, man ; yet this new
phenomenon, which emerges first with the appear-
ance of man, strikes the eye of the ordinary
observer as clearly as the eye of the naturalist.
This new phenomenon is, according to its essential
form, the appearance of self-consciousness as dis-
tinguished from mere consciousness, and the
appearance of free self-determination as distinct
from mere arbitrariness ; according to its con-
tent, for which its form is only the vessel, this
new phenomenon in the case of the human indi-
vidual is the personality with all its varied life of
the soul and spirit, rising even to prayer and to
communion with God. In the case of humanity
as a whole, it represents the entire history of the
world and human progress. As Otto says, very
truly (p. 260) : " Different as is the psychical
equipment in the various stages of animal exist-
ence, yet common to it everywhere is its depend-
ence on what is given it by Nature. An animal
species may be a million years old. Yet it has
no history. It is and it remains the same product
of Nature, it is devoid of history." This new phe-
nomenon appears in every single human individual

132 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

in a perfectly gradual evolution, in the course of
transitions, hardly or absolutely unnoticeable, from
the impregnated single-celled egg in the womb up
to the awakening of self-consciousness in the grow-
ing child. And it is also probable that the human
race itself has come into existence by such a
gradual evolution. But while this evolution may
have gone on through such long periods of time,
nevertheless man has become what he is by the
awakening of self-consciousness and free self-de-
termination. Those beings in whom self- conscious-
ness and consciousness of free self-determination
first awoke, were the first of mankind to exist ;
the existences preceding them were only the
initial stages of mankind. With Primitive Man,
something specifically new came into being, some-
thing indeed which was not only new but of a
higher order, a perfectly new and incomparably
superior world of being. It was a form of exist-
ence, as new and superior to what had preceded
it, as, at an earlier stage, had been the first
appearance of the organic in the sphere of the
inorganic, of the living among the extinct, of the
conscious among the unconscious. The elements
of that inorganic world had to be so constituted

RECORD OF CREATION 133

that they could provide soil for the appearance
of the organic, i.e. of the animal and vegetable
world, and this explains all the vain attempts,
which we have already outlined, to deduce the
organic from the inorganic, the living from the
dead. Similarly, the living and organic, in the
animal world, had so to be constituted that man-
kind might come into existence in that sphere,
and from this indisputable fact we can under-
stand the equally vain attempts to explain the
origin of man from the animal world.

We find in the writings of most scientists who
have occupied themselves with the relationship of
animals and men, that what is specifically human
is handled with exceptional carelessness. Dar-
win has written a work on the Descent of man,
but the origin of self -consciousness, individuality, ab-
straction, general conceptions, etc., he dismisses in a
single page (German edition, vol. i., p. 52 ff.). The
moral feeling he treats in greater detail, devoting
the whole of the third chapter to it. He de-
duces it from the social instincts connected with
a highly developed intelligence, and says in his
concluding chapter that the fact that man is the
only being whom one can with certainty name as

134 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

moral, forms the greatest of all differences be-
tween men and animals. But in that highly de-
veloped intelligence which lifts the moral feeling
up to responsible self-determination, we have finally
to recognise self-consciousness as an indispensable
condition, and we have the right to demand a
further explanation of the origin of self-conscious-
ness.

Häckel expounds in his writings, in much more
detail, the life of the soul. In his Riddle of the
Universe, the psychological part, or discussion on
the life of the soul, occupies the whole of the
fourth part of the work ; but we look in vain for
any recognition or even for any description of
the difference between the souls of men and of
animals. This is inevitable, for he denies the
distinction, recognising it only as quantitative not
qualitative. Everything specifically human he finds
in the soul-life of the animals as well. Thus on
page 144 (Eng. Tr., p. 44) he says, "the higher
vertebrates, especially those mammals most nearly
related to man, have just as good a title to 'reason'
as man himself, and within the animal world we
can also trace a long series of steps in the gradual
evolution of reason just as we can with man ".

RECORD OF CREATION 135

Moreover the great problem of the freedom of will
is solved once for all by him and solved negatively.
"There is no free-will," says Häckel. He does
not seem to distinguish in the least between con-
sciousness and self-consciousness : at any rate, at the
point where he discusses the idea of conscious-
ness (p. 198, Eng. Tr., p. 61), he breaks conscious-
ness up into two main divisions, world-consciousness
and self -consciousness , and moreover, e.g. (p. 214,
Eng. Tr., p. 66), in the ontogeny of consciousness,
he makes consciousness and self-consciousness
one and the same thing. In his latest work The
Wonders of Life (Kröner, Stuttgart, 1904) we still
find him supporting the same position. In his
Riddle of the Universe (p. 357, Eng. Tr., p. 71 f.)
he called the life of the spirit a portion of the
physiology of the brain. In The Wonders of Life
he says (p. 98, Eng. Tr., p. 36 f.), " Biology (taken
in its widest sense !) is only a special branch of
zoology, to which on account of its exceptional
significance we assign a special place. Accord-
ingly, all sciences that have to do with man and
the activities of his soul, especially the so-called
mental sciences, are, if we follow the higher
monistic standpoint, to be considered special

136 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

branches of zoology, and consequently to be
classed among the natural sciences ". He con-
tinues (p. 380) : " The human spirit is a function
of the phronema " — the phronema being the think-
ing organ in the brain, the grey substance of
the brain-cortex.

Happily there has been no lack, on the side of
scientists, of stout opposition to this monism,
which, everywhere in Nature and especially in
the sphere of psychology, confounds the condi-
tion and ground of the higher life with its origin,
and thereby lowers the worth of the higher forms
which thus come into existence.

One writer, who takes an equally eminent posi-
tion as scientist and philosopher, the physiologist
and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig (born
1832), is a truly typical example of this healthy and
in fact highly necessary reaction on the part of
science. In the year 1863 he published through
Leopold Voss in Leipzig some lectures on the soul
of animals and human beings, in which he still ad-
hered to this standpoint of psychological monism,
and boasted (on p. 8 of this lecture) that the Law of
the Conservation of Energy in the domain of psych-
ology was expounded there for the first time.

RECORD OF CREATION 137

By doing so he contradicted tacitly the first
discoverer of this law, Robert Mayer. The latter,
in his Innsbruck Lecture on the necessary infer-
ences to be drawn from the mechanics of heat,
expressly excluded the psychological domain from
this law of the conservation of energy, declaring
it to be a vulgar error, if one sought to identify
two activities which run parallel with each other,
viz., the brain-activity and the mental functions
of the individual.

In a second edition twenty-nine years later,
Wundt (1892) declares the standpoint of the first
edition to be a sin of his youth which weighed
upon him like a debt till he atoned for it by this
second revised edition. Here he takes up the
entire standpoint of "psycho-physical parallel-
ism," defending the higher and autonomous value
of mental life and mental evolution, as indepen-
dent of all physical processes of the brain.

The most thorough studies of the relation be-
tween the human soul and that of animals may
be found in the two works, already mentioned,
by the Englishman Romanes, which I have before
me in a German translation, viz. Mental Develop-
ment in the Animal Kingdom (authorised German

138 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

edition, Leipzig, Ernst Günther, 1883) and The
Mental Development of Man (same publisher, 1893).

If we ask finally what information geology and
palaeontology give us concerning the age of the
human family and the character of its oldest re-
mains, we are indeed not without guiding stars
to lighten our darkness, but we are very far from
possessing absolute knowledge on the question.

That man came into existence in the geological
Tertiary Period, as many geologists think they
have already discovered, is indeed probable, but up
till now it has not been proved as an indisputable
fact. Yet in any case, in the Diluvial Period,
which followed immediately on the Tertiary
Period, we come upon very numerous and quite
indisputable traces of human existence in Europe,
and thereby the age of the human family is put
back many thousands of years more than the
four thousand years before Christ, which the Bible
narratives assign it.

The Diluvial Period must have lasted a very
long time — a fact proved by the traces of exten-
sive glacialisation on the northern portion of the
earth, which scientists have lately been obliged to
take as four periods with three intervals. The

RECORD OF CREATION 139

latest presentation of this has been given us by
Moritz Homes in his work Diluvial Man in Europe
(Friedr. Vieweg & Son, Brunswick). Each of
these three intervals has not only left numerous
traces of a wealth of " mammalia " but also in-
disputable traces of human existence in the form
of remains of skeletons and countless numbers of
human implements made of stones or bones and
other materials, so that one can speak even of
a development of European civilisation in these
intervals. All three intervals, to judge from the
material from which these implements are made,
belong to the older Stone Age. The later Stone
Age, as well as the Bronze and Iron Ages, are
of subsequent date.

The first of these intervals is the time of the
flourishing of the cave-bear. It had still a com-
paratively warm climate — as is shown by the
appearance of the thin - skinned elephants and
rhinoceri in distinction to the shaggy fauna of
the second intervening Glacial Age. From this
period we have great rough-hewn almond-shaped
stone implements, and again little darts and
tools, on which, however, no trace of any art
has yet been found ; we have also the highly

140 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

important human skull and skeleton remains,
which show the full human type in the size
and shape of the hollow of the skull, and, in
addition to that, peculiarities of shape that re-
mind one of characteristics in the skeleton of the
modern anthropoid ape. The most famous skele-
ton remains of this kind are the skull found in
the Neanderthal near Düsseldorf and the skeletons
from Krapina near Agram in Croatia. The marks
that recall the skull of the anthropoid apes are
decided protuberances above the eye-brows and a
large protuberance at the back of the head. This
is most marked in the skull found in the Neander-
thal. Virchow was inclined to take this skull as
a diseased formation, as the skull of a man who
had had rachitis in his youth and gout in his
old age ; but after a number of analogous skulls
were found, this opinion was given up. In the
case of the muscular appendages of the skull
from Krapina, Klaatsch proved that the capacity
for mastication possessed by the men of that
period was, in comparison to their capacity of
speech, rather more developed than that of human
beings at the present day. The second interven-
ing Glacial Period had a colder climate than the

RECORD OF CREATION 141

first, as is shown by the appearance of the hairy
mammoth with its thick shaggy skin, and the
shaggy rhinoceros. It is the hey-day of the
mammoth, and of the wild horse which some-
what resembled the horse of to-day. While the
human remains of this period, among which those
belonging to Spy and Engis in Belgium ought to
be named, remind us somewhat less of those lower
forms, yet the implements of this period are dis-
tinguished by drawings and cuttings in bone and
ivory, and also by really striking drawings of
animals on the walls of the caves. Finally, in
the third and colder intervening Glacial Period,
the typical Reindeer Age, the outline drawings
on bones, especially on antlers of the reindeer,
and the artistic carvings, attain a yet higher pitch
of excellence, while the human skulls of this period,
called by the French " the race of Cro Magnon,"
are in no way inferior to the skulls of human
beings of to-day.

Up till now there have been no indisputable
forms discovered bridging animals and men. The
famous pithecanthropus erectus, which the Dutch
doctor Dubois discovered in September, 1897, on
the island of Java, in a superpliocene or sub-

]42 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

quaternary stratum, that is on the upper boundary
of the tertiary formations, is indeed held by some
scientists to be a form between man and the an-
thropoid ape, but the majority of other scientists
disagree. Nor is it at all a reliable witness, as
its three parts were found at distances from each
other — which does not exclude the possibility that
they belonged to different individuals. The frag-
ments were, one skeleton of an upper thigh, two
cheek-teeth, and a skull. The skeleton of the
upper thigh belonged to a being of upright gait.
The cheek-teeth remind one partly of the teeth
of the anthropoid ape and partly of human teeth.
The skull very closely resembles the gibbon's
skull, an anthropoid ape that still exists in Java ;
but it is much larger, as large in fact as a
human skull. Consequently, as has been said
above, some scientists who have examined it con-
sider it a midway form between ape and man.
Others think it the skull of a human being; but
the majority regard it as the skull of a gibbon,
which shows by its size that there also, as in
many regions of the earth throughout the fauna
of the Tertiary and Diluvial Ages, there were
forerunners of present day mammals which de-

RECORD OF CREATION 143

cidedly surpassed in size the corresponding modern
inhabitants of the same region.

Thus it remains an open question for us as to
when and with what powers the human race first
came into existence. And the question as to what
part of the earth was their first home, is still
further from a decision. Häckel falls back on a
hypothetical submerged continent in the Indian
Ocean connected with Asia and Africa, which,
following the Englishman Slater, he calls Lemuria.
But all this is nothing else than an ingenious
hypothesis, which must still wait for confirmation
or contradiction.

V. What is the Attitude of the Christian
Religion to Biological and Anthropo-
logical Research ?

If we now pass to the question, What is the
attitude of Christianity to the natural history of
Creation ? — which we have hitherto treated in
outline — we find this question already answered
in the sphere of astronomy, cosmic physics, and
chemistry, and answered peacefully as regards
science and religion. But in the sphere of biology
and anthropology the contradictions that emerge

144 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

between the scientific and religious interests touch
one another at a far greater number of points, and
often in really sharp fashion, so that it seems
better to describe first, in this sphere, the results
and the present-day position of scientific research,
and then to devote a special section to the ques-
tion of their attitude with regard to Christianity.

As matters now stand, in consequence of recent
progress in natural science, a number of views
which hitherto seemed to belong to the province
of the Christian view of the world, have been
seriously shifted.

In the first place we note the theory of the age
of the earth and of its inhabitants, i.e. the human race.
The results of science are here opposed to the
real or alleged words of the Bible. These in-
controvertible results attribute to the existence of
the earth, to the existence of animal and plant
life, and especially to the existence of the human
race, a very much greater age than is to be found
in Holy Scripture. It is indeed impossible in
face of these results of science to maintain the
opposite utterances of the Bible. But the abandon-
ment of this standpoint, which could only be up-
held in any case on the ground of the untenable

RECORD OF CREATION 145

assumption of a literal inspiration of Holy Scrip-
ture, is for Christianity no loss. It is a gain. For
this abandonment limits the character of the reve-
lation of Holy Scripture to what is valuable for the
religious feeling, and especially to what relates to
our redemption through Christ, a limitation which
preserves us in turn from a collision between Faith
and Science, which would be unbearable and could
only end in certain disaster to Faith. Our mind
cannot endure any double book-keeping, accord-
ing to which something could be at once scientifi-
cally true and religiously false, or vice versa. Only
through the unity of truth does our religious as
well as our scientific conscience find harmony and
\/ peace.

Moreover, a probability, almost amounting to
truth, points to the fact that the higher species of
organic existences, including man, have come into
being by descent from the lower species. If this
probability were raised to the stage of certainty,
a stage which it has already attained to-day in
the minds of the majority of scientists, one would
simply have to say of this knowledge what one
has to say of every forward step in our knowledge

of Nature, viz. that it yields us only a new and

10

146 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

deeper view of the manner and method of the
Divine Creation, a view which would be no hind-
rance to, but rather an enrichment of, our religious
ideas.

A further achievement of Natural Science is the
discovery that evolution in the origin of organ-
isms and of the human race plays a role hither-
to undreamt of. It is indeed the case that there is
in the present day much enthusiasm and mad
ecstasy over the idea of all things and qualities
originating by means of a perfectly gradual evolu-
tion, and, so far as science is thus inclined to
lay much greater stress on the lower from which
the higher was evolved, than on the higher which
has arisen from the lower, it is on a track that
leads down instead of up, inasmuch as such a
method rejects religion and Christianity. The
theories described above (p. 140 f.), viz., that the
activities of the human spirit are identical with
the movements of the molecules of the brain,
theories which do not see in these motions only
the ground, support, and instrument of activities
of the brain — belong to this inclined plane which
slopes downwards. The religious aspect of the
world simply cannot accept them. Happily they

RECORD OF CREATION 147

are just as unacceptable to a science which looks
deeper — as we showed above in the case of
the protest which no less a person than Robert
Mayer, the first discoverer of the Conservation
of Energy, raised against "the vulgar error" of
identifying the activities of the brain with the
mental functions of the individual.

But eccentricities and erroneous theories cannot
hinder us from recognising the fact that evolution
in the origin of things really plays a part which
formerly had not been suspected. Now we might
refuse to raise or answer the question as to how
Christianity is related to the theory of an origin of
things and of existence itself by means of a per-
fectly gradual evolution, on the plea that this
theory of the origin of species and of man has only
the character of a more or less probable hypothesis,
that it must probably share its supremacy with
the theory of sudden new formations which spas-
modically appear, and that it seems precipitate to
estimate the religious value of mere hypotheses.
But such a refusal would not be wise. It might
arouse the suspicion that it was the interest
of religion to combat generally the theory . of
evolution. Now, while the theory of evolution,

148 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

as far as regards either the origin of genera
and species, or purely prehuman occurrences
which are withdrawn from immediate observa-
tion, is indeed a mere hypothesis, with regard
to the origin of plant, animal, and human life,
it is no hypothesis; it rests on a fact which is
repeated a thousandfold before our eyes, and com-
pels us to take a more friendly attitude than sev-
eral are inclined to take, even towards what was
till now a mere hypothesis. This is the fact, viz.
that every single human individual, like all pluro-
cellular individuals in the animal and vegetable
kingdom, comes into being by perfectly gradual
evolution. Even the coming of the Redeemer
is not an exception to this rule. The human
individual begins his existence after generation as
an impregnated single-celled egg. This is de-
veloped in the uterus by perfectly gradual transi-
tions until it is ripe for birth. Moreover this
moment of ripeness is not an absolutely fixed
one ; there are premature births and delayed births
without fatal results. Then the growth and the
evolution of the newly-born also constitute a pro-
cess of perfectly gradual evolution. We know the
new qualities of the child who has developed to

RECORD OF CREATION 149

the full growth of a man, once these new qualities
are there, but seldom or never can we put our
finger on the precise moment when they came into
existence : they came by a gradual evolution. It
does not occur to us to judge the worth of a human
individual according to what it was in an earlier
stage of its evolution ; we estimate its value by
what it has become. Individuals have their own
worth, and their qualities and achievements are
of value, whether they appear suddenly or gradu-
ally. In face of this fact, that all human indi-
viduals come into existence by evolution, we must
also reckon with the possibility that the human
race itself arose by gradual evolution, nor have
we any right to check the search for fresh light
in this direction. Whether the new life that
came into existence by this presumed method of
gradual evolution, came from existing germinal
conditions whose operation was dormant till then,
and then was released through new physical
combinations unknown to us, or whether the new
factor appeared each time as a fresh impetus from
the invisible world to the visible, is certainly a
question still unsolved. Probably it will remain
insoluble. But its solution is unimportant to

150 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

religion. For, on the religious view, everything
that happens is so entirely under Divine Guidance
that it is all the same whether God already
put into the beginning of all things the potenti-
ality of what they were to become, or whether
He put the new thing each time afresh into His
World by a new start. Moreover, the further
probability that the upward evolution took place
partly in quite gradual, and well-nigh impercept-
ible transitions, and partly in sudden, spasmodic,
and upward transitions, in no way conflicts with
our religious consciousness.

We meet with a similar uncertainty in the work
of those scientists who refer all that comes into
being to the beginnings and original elements of
all existence, by maintaining that the very atoms
are animate. This idea suffers from being intrinsi-
cally obscure. If it simply denotes their capacity
of furnishing the material condition and ground
for animate existences with their psychical and
mental functions, it is not only harmless for religion
but indeed a postulate for any scheme of thought
which aims at a uniform view of the universe. But
one must not forget that the idea of an animate
atom has only a somewhat remote connection

RECORD OF CREATION 151

with what we understand, from our own know-
ledge of the soul and soul-life, as animate being.
The idea of the animation of atoms will in this
event be essentially limited; we can merely at-
tribute to them a multifarious energy which in-
volves attracting and repelling powers of a very
definite character. For only atoms, so equipped,
can furnish a bodily foundation for soul-life. But
of conscious or self-conscious perception, thought, or
will, we cannot as yet speak. On the other hand,
if the assertion that the atoms are animate, means
that the whole soul-life of the animal world arose
from them by purely causal evolution, and that
from this again by purely causal evolution the
whole mental life of humanity evolved, then this
idea of animation has a far-reaching significance,
which, as we have said above, we cannot accept.
It goes far beyond the limitation described above.
And in so doing it brings only confusion instead
of clearness. For thus what was strictly an hy-
pothesis regarding the final problems of the uni-
verse, and an hypothesis conscious of its own
limitations, is transmogrified into an unbridled
flight of fancy. And as such it cannot but be
denied by the religious interest.

152 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

The supposition of the animation of atoms
was, according to Lange (History of Materialism,
second ed., vol. i., p. 313), first advanced by the
Frenchman Robinet in his Book of Nature (1761).
But the idea met with little consideration for
a century, until in recent times it began to play
a role in philosophic speculation. This supposi-
tion, especially when advanced in the far-reaching
sense which we reject as fantastic, is the neces-
sary consequence of a modern and widespread
pantheistic view, called by Häckel monistic, which
forbids any idea of aim or purpose in the world.
Such a monistic view substitutes, for a teleologi-
cal evolution of the world with definite aim, a
purely causal one, which by the exclusive action
of cause and effect attains to what turns out, after
it has come to pass, to be fitted for some end, al-
though this was never willed at all. The unswerv-
ing adherence to law, by which the forces of the
world work, must compel our minds, we are told,
to accept this " elimination of teleology," as one
often hears people say, and to accept, by way of
compensation, the exclusive reign of causality. In
spite of the authority of Spinoza, to whom, so
far as I know, this thought, already culled from

RECORD OF CREATION 153

Empedocles, owes its full equipment, I venture
to say that I do not understand how, within
the range of human life, the unalterable do-
minion of the laws of Nature, which operate of
necessity, can be held to compel us to reject the
operation of teleological causes, i.e. the establish-
ment and attainment of aims in the universe.
For man indeed acts entirely ideologically, and
his teleological actions are not only in absolute
harmony with that causal necessity, with which the
powers of Nature work, but presuppose Nature's
unalterable necessity and subjection to law. Man
sets up his own aims and attains them by the
materials and energies of Nature, not in spite of the
necessity and subjection to law with which these
powers work, but by means of this very necessity
and subjection to law. He can use the materials
and powers of Nature for the attainment of his
purpose and aim, only because he is acquainted
with them, because he understands the laws of
their working, because he knows that these work
by unalterable necessity, and because he can sus-
pend their operation, or cause them to cease at
his pleasure.

This is especially true of what man constructs,

154 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

from the simplest lever used by a stone-breaker,
or the simplest spade and wheel-barrow of the
peasant, up to wireless telegraphy and all the
astonishing achievements in every sphere of mod-
ern technique, whereby forces of Nature, which
operate of sheer necessity, are employed, with
truly colossal results, in the service of human aims.
An attractive presentation of this thought is to
be found in an English book, The Reign of Law,
which was written in the year 1866 by the late
Duke of Argyll. It went through many editions
and was much read, especially in America. In his
subsequent works, The Unity of Nature and The
Philosophy of Belief, he delights to recapitulate the
same theme.

Now a view which denies the operation of any
teleological forces in the world is at most compat-
ible with a pantheistic belief, and with one of ex-
tremely attenuated proportions ; but it is in direct
contradiction to a deistic and much more to a
theistic view of the world, and of course also to
Christianity. Furthermore it contains difficulties,
compared with which the most difficult problems
of the Christian view are mere trifles.

The inorganic world is set in such a wonder-

RECORD OF CREATION 155

ful harmony of all the materials and energies
of the universe, that it is impossible to think
of it apart from a determining Intelligence and
Almighty Power, unless one soothes oneself with
the thought already expressed by the Greek philo-
sopher Empedocles (490-430 b.c.), and repeated
by Lange in his History of Materialism, that what
is fitted to a purpose must be present in prepon-
derance, because its essence is to maintain itself
when what is not fitted to a purpose has long
since passed away. That the heavenly bodies
move exactly as they do, that matter in the uni-
verse is just as it is, that the air, water, and earth
of our planet possess that constitution in virtue of
which they are able to form the basis of organic
life culminating in man endowed with mind and
soul, but that all this, instead of being willed,
has only become so without a determining will,
without any all-ruling Intelligence or Almighty
power— this surely is an insuperable difficulty to

the mind.

And this difficulty becomes still more formidable
when we take into consideration the organic world,
and especially man with his mental life of purpose
and aim. That the plants and animals are

156 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

organisms composed with exceptional fitness for
their own ends, and that man is the highest of
all organisms on earth, has long been generally
known ; but the palaeontological discoveries of
the last century have changed this rather ideal
knowledge into a very practical one. They have
proved that this lofty position of man has a
previous history extending over innumerable mil-
lenniums, during which organic life arose on the
earth with simple beginnings and unfolded it-
self in ever higher and higher organisms, till
the appearance of man with his wealth of
mental and psychical life. Now to suppose that
this gradual ascent with its progressive mastery
and occupation of matter by the mental and
psychical, until the final emergence of the mental
in man, is not something planned and willed by
a higher intelligence, but only something that has
simply happened through the category of cause
and effect ; to suppose that while intelligent, self-
conscious, and responsible beings such as men
are, should exist on earth, the last and supreme
cause of all existence, even of the existence of
man, should lack all the very attributes which
are highest in man and stamp man as the head

RECORD OF CREATION 157

of creation on the earth, viz. the attributes of
self-consciousness, intelligence, will and love —
to suppose this, I say, involves insuperable diffi-
culties. David Frederick Strauss in his Old and
New Faith has given a truly classical expression to
this difficulty when he says (second ed., p. 143) :
"The world is for us no longer founded by the
Highest Reason but founded on the highest reason.
Certainly we must add to the cause what lies in
the effect ; what comes out must certainly have
also been within. But it is only the limitation,
of our human intelligence that causes us to draw
these distinctions; the universe is indeed cause
and effect, outward and inward, at one and the
same time."

Now, according to this view of the world, which
rejects any purposive energy, what is the course
of the world ? Until a few centuries ago there
was only one answer given to this question.
"The world revolves, from everlasting to ever-
lasting." On this view, human individuals were
simply annihilated when they had finished their
course on earth. Moreover mankind was to be
simply annihilated without leaving a single trace,
when the earth collided with the sun. New

158 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

creations come and pass, and the world goes
on in ceaseless revolution. But recently this
idea has been challenged by another : viz. that
the course of the universe tends finally to an
entropy, i.e., an equable diffusion of the energy of
heat through the universe, whereby that energy
would become inoperative, and all life would
cease.

It is patent that both these ideas of the course
of Nature do little to satisfy our intelligence, still
less our needs of the soul and the demands of our
religion. It is therefore no wonder that pessim-
ism holds sway over so many minds, harking back
partly to the pessimist Schopenhauer (1788-1860),
and in part finding new expression in a thinker
so keen and so well versed in natural science as
Eduard von Hartmann. No one can demonstrate
better than he the operation of teleological ener-
gies, that is to say, of energies that make for an
end, but the view which he arrives at makes the
world come into existence by a mischance and pass
again into nothingness. The unconscious, bright
world-substance, under the mysterious constraint
of its equally unconscious will, has at one time
committed the error of creating a world, and now,

RECORD OF CREATION 159

with the instinct of an unconscious teleology, it
leads this world on in an evolution which is melan-
choly and yet, relatively speaking, its best course,
till, grown to ripeness, the world drops once more
into nothingness, and thereby the absolute is at
rest. Now these are vast difficulties to thought,
compared with which the difficulties of a Christian
view of the world are trifling.

Passing from the atheistic or pantheistic view
of the world to the definitely religious view, based
on a Personal, All-Powerful, All-Wise, and Holy
God, who created the world and is leading it to
a goal of perfection, we have first to state the
difference between the deistic and theistic concep-
tion of the world (cf. pp. 2, 3).

According to the deistic view, which arose in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England,
God so made the world that it pursued its further
course according to purely immanent laws, and
no longer had any need of special Divine Guid-
ance. God remains transcendent over against the
world after the creation, though the fact of a moral
order of the world, the demands of the moral law,
and the wonderful disposition of the world, remind
man of His Existence, demanding wonder and

160 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

worship. This view has never been generally
accepted, but it is still a standpoint with which
many are content. That it is insufficient for the
Christian view is clear, inasmuch as personal
communion with a Personal and accessible God
is the vital breath of the Christian's life.

The theistic view, which originated on the soil
of Judaism, sees in God the transcendent Creator
of the world, Who remains always immanent in
His world and by His Personal Omnipresence
conducts it to its goal. This conception is at
the same time the presupposition of Christianity.
But the Christian view of the world takes a still
more concrete form. In the Supreme Intelligence,
in the Almighty Power, and in the Holy God, Who
demands holiness from His reasonable creatures,
it further recognises the God of Love, Who in
Jesus Christ His Son reconciles sinful man to
Himself, giving them the right to look on God as
their Father and to know themselves as children
of God who may live in eternal communion with
Him in that divine kingdom which exists both
on earth and in heaven. This communion by
prayer with the Heavenly Father, which is based
on Christ's redemptive work and Word, forms

RECORD OF CREATION 161

for the Christian a coherent sum of experiences,
which are for him, at least, just as real as his
experiences of the world, but far surpassing the
latter in worth. They soothe and satisfy the
deepest longings of his heart. In this com-
munion with his Heavenly Father, founded upon
Christ, the Christian also possesses above all the
pledge of eternal life for himself, and of the final
perfecting of mankind in the kingdom of God.
He may be, and may remain, much in the dark
as to how this perfecting of the individual, or of all
humanity, is to be achieved ; yet the fact remains
so firm that he can close his eyes peacefully in
death and, like his Saviour, commit his spirit
into the hands of his Heavenly Father.

The Christian view of the world has, like
any other, its intellectual difficulties. To begin
with, it does not get above those limitations
which condition all human thought and pertain
to the various views of the world, limitations,
i.e. which prevent us from thinking of space and
time as either limited or unlimited. Then, the
Christian view of the world presents special diffi-
culties, peculiar to itself. That the Almighty God,

Who is Love, created a world in which sin and

11

162 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

evil play so great a part, and in which, above all,
the relation between the moral conduct of man
and his happiness or unhappiness on earth often
shows such glaring discrepancies, is a riddle at
which humanity, in its passion for God, has
laboured from the time of the composition of the
Book of Job and of the Psalms (xxxvii. and lxxiii.)
down to the present day. This riddle has not be-
come easier through the discoveries of Science ; it
has become harder. For Science has discovered
that not only death but also murder reaches back
far beyond the beginning of the human race, that
it is as old as the animal world itself, and that
all the elemental catastrophes which to-day visit
so many lives and often bring destruction ac-
companied by the greatest torture, are as old
as organic life on earth. Such a perception of
what apparently contradicts reason and is at the
same time cruel, inflicts a sore test on the
belief that Almighty God is Love. Yet this
discord is not more perplexing than much else
that is perplexing in the world ; all points to the
fact that God wishes not only to be revealed but also
to be hidden, because He will not compel recogni-
tion of Himself by indisputable logical and mathe-

RECORD OF CREATION 163

matical proofs, desiring rather to win grateful
love and free devotion from men who have
experienced so much of His redeeming Love in
their own lives that, for all the apparent con-
tradictions of reason, contradictions which they
are not able to solve, they refuse to mistrust His
Absolute Goodness. The actual experience that
there is for us the forgiveness of sins, and that all
suffering, whether immediately due to sin or not,
has an educative effect on a pious soul, and that
it is the struggle against evil in the world which
summons man to exert all his noblest powers
and to unfold all his social virtues, this shows us
the way in which we can trustfully hand over the
solution of this and of life's other problems to
the Almighty Power, Wisdom, and Love of Our
Heavenly Father, hoping for a blessed consumma-
tion of humanity in which we ourselves shall share.
With this inward hope of a personal eternal
life, we next confront a further special difficulty
of the Christian view of the world. For this hope
must face the fact that psychical and mental
life is bound up on earth with the body and its
organism, and that this body dies with us. This
difficulty may be met from two sides. One is the

164 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Christian hope, assured by Christ's Resurrection,
that after the death of this body a glorified body is
bestowed on us, in which sin, death, and pain are
for ever overcome. Whether man sleeps between
Death and the Resurrection, or directly after
Death enters upon the Resurrection in a con-
scious, continuous, heavenly, and embodied state,
may be left, on account of the veil that hangs be-
tween this world and the next, an open question
— to be answered perhaps, rightly, in the latter way.
The second ground on which the hope of eternal
life may be raised to a certainty, is our conception
of God. God is not, in the eye of the Christian,
what Häckel blasphemously calls a gaseous verte-
brate, but a Spirit, i.e. He has not the limitations
of embodiment and yet He is the Supreme In-
telligence, the Almighty One, the Holy One, and
— Love. It is only logical for our minds to
attribute to such an Originator and Founder of
all existence the power to give eternal life, in spite
of their earthly death, to men whom He has de-
clared to be His children. " God is not a God of
the dead, but a God of the living" says Jesus
(Matt. xxii. 32, Mark xii. 27, Luke xx. 38).

Our idea of God lifts us also across the last

RECORD OF CREATION 165

and greatest of the difficulties with which the
Christian view of the world finds itself con-
fronted, viz. the difficulty of believing that God
is leading the world to a goal of perfection.
Never does man feel himself smaller than when
he occupies himself with this thought : " What
are we, compared with all the millions and
billions of heavenly bodies that fill space and
move on their predestined course ? A mere speck.
What do we know of all the beings that may
dwell in these heavenly bodies ? Nothing, abso-
lutely nothing." Yet we must trust Him who
created the world, trust that He has some purpose
concerning it, and that He can lead it to this goal.
At this juncture also we must repeat: the fact of
this consummation is a reality, though the how is
hidden from our view. And if we set over against
this thought of an aim for the world, the two other
thoughts which are all that are left to us when the
idea of such an aim is denied, viz. the thoughts of
an endless gyration and of a final entropy of the
world, it is not difficult to say which thought is
the more satisfactory.

But this advantage is not the only one that the
Christian view of the world has over others ; there
are others that go hand in hand with it.

166 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

Above all there is the certainty of an eternal
communion with God that satisfies the human
spirit, and even guarantees a bliss for which
none of the other views can make any amends.

Then the Christian view of the world alone gives
that rest and restraint which we need in our
thoughts concerning the further evolution of or-
ganisms on earth. The discovery that the different
organisms have originated along a steady progress
to higher and higher stages of evolution, has sug-
gested to naturalistic theories of the world the
idea that while Man has represented up till now
the highest grade of organisms on earth, there is
no reason for supposing it impossible that yet
higher grades of existence than man on the earth
might be developed. The Christian view of the
world rejects this thought as fantastic. Accord-
ing to the Christian conception, the spiritualisation
of Nature, the continuous evolution of organisms,
the elevation of animate natural existences to
existences endowed with spirit, — this has reached
its summit with the appearance of man as a
self-conscious being capable of the Idea of God,
of responsibility, and of free-will. Mankind, which
through the calamity of sin had got out of its

RECORD OF CREATION 167

true groove, has by the coming and the redemp-
tive work of Jesus Christ been redeemed from
this calamity and its consequences, and, in addi-
tion to the temporary and passing life that it
has to lead down here, has been endowed with
life eternal as a gift of God. This is certainly
a mighty and pregnant advance ; it is, indeed,
as the Bible expresses it, a New Birth and a
New Creation, but it is a further development
within mankind itself, and a further development
which has started with the coming of Christ and
the acceptance of His Redemption. It begins
with those who receive the Redemption being
received into the Kingdom of God as children of
God, finds its continuation in the next world, and
its completion in the New Creation of Heaven
and Earth. Anything higher than being a child
of God and having eternal life is quite unthinkable.
Henry Drummond (1851-97), the Scotchman,
expressed very attractively this conception of
Christianity as a new creation on the basis of
mankind, in his book, Natural Law in the Spiritual
World (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1883). It
has passed through many editions and under the
title Das Naturgesetz in der Geisteswelt has been

168 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

translated into German and widely circulated.
Drummond only invites criticism here and there,
as e.g. when in his transference of natural laws
to the spiritual world he follows too blindly
the problematical ideas of Herbert Spencer; for
example, he applies too naively the latter's un-
acceptable definition of the idea of Life (Life
as the perpetual adjustment of inner relations
to outward conditions). But on the whole his
book is full of fine conceptions.

When I glance over the views of the world
already described, I do not cherish the vain
hope that my portrayal of the advantages which
the Christian view of the world possesses over its
rivals (advantages, the truth of which I am per-
fectly convinced of) can win over to the Christian
standpoint any reader who holds to another view.
For each view has its difficulties ; each rests far
more on Faith than on Knowledge. It was not
without good and vital reason that David Friedrich
Strauss gave his book the title, not of The Old Faith
and the New Knowledge but of The Old and the New
Faith. Whether one closes with this or that view
of the world, depends on the bent of his mind and
the decision of his will, not on the keenness of

RECORD OF CREATION 169

his logic or the amount of his knowledge. But I
venture in all modesty to cherish another hope.
At the present day, there is no lack of individuals
who have been laid hold of by the liberating and
blessed power of Christianity and gladly admitted
its influence ; on whom, however, the loud and
reiterated cries of the advocates of a naturalistic
view of the world make some impression, sug-
gesting that to-day a Christian view of the world
is no longer compatible with culture and science.
To such readers I hope to be able to extend a
friendly hand, and to strengthen them in the
conviction that the Christian view of the world
can at every point cope with its rivals, and in
no way compels its adherents to abandon culture and
science. Especially in what concerns the highest
form of culture, the training of the heart, humble
submission to a Holy and Personal God, Who is
the Creator and Ruler of the world and at the
same time an All-Pitying Love, is a more effectual
means of culture than a Promethean self-glorifi-
cation. As for joy in Nature, his share of it is
greater who admires in Nature the work of a
Creator, and enjoys its real and ideal gifts with
gratefulness to the Heavenly Giver, than his

170 RELIGION AND THE SCIENTIFIC

who can only admire in it a universe resting on
itself.

I venture finally to express a further hope. If
this study of mine is read by some who take their
stand with perfect confidence on the Christian
view of the world, but who, by reason of the
attacks of many present-day scientists on Christi-
anity, have themselves begun to suspect science, I
hope to have persuaded such readers that views
which are opposed to religion imply some trans-
gression of the limits of science, and pertain no
longer to the sphere of science but to the sphere
of metaphysics and philosophy ; science itself is
thoroughly compatible with religion, — nay more,
the results of science actually enrich our sense of
religion, and offer to the religious outlook upon
Nature only new and elevating points of view.
The greater the number is of those who combine a
thoroughly Christian conviction with an open eye
for Nature and the researches of natural science,
the fewer will become the voices that assert the
incompatibility of Christianity with culture and
science.

It is an exceptional pleasure to me to see
not only how much literature, but also how

RECORD OF CREATION 171

much valuable literature, is nowadays published
on the question of the relation between science
and Christianity, not merely literature occasioned
by such attacks on the Christian view of the
world as have come from Häckel and recently
from Ladenburg in his Cassel lecture, but books
arising spontaneously. It would be impossible
to give a complete list of these publications, nor
would this lie within the range of my volume;
yet I would mention, on the scientific side,
Reinke, Pauly, and Dennert ; on the philosophic
side, Eucken, Paulsen, Adickes, Julius Baumann,
and Portig (The Universal Law of the Applica-
tion of Energy) ; and on the theological side,
Otto, Braasch, Loofs, Reischle, Kautzsch, Adolf
Müller, Titius, Kirn, Zöckler, and Steude. Roman
Catholic theologians have also expressed them-
selves favourably to the theory of descent and
evolution, e.g., the Jesuit Erich Wasmann in his
book, Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution
(Freiburg, Herder, second ed., 1904). The maga-
zine Faith and Knowledge, edited by Dennert, and
published by Kielmann (Stuttgart), is, as the title
indicates, entirely devoted to the defence and
deepening of the Christian idea of the world.

CHAPTER IV

PROVIDENCE, PRAYER, AND MIRACLES

Faith in a Divine Providence, in answers to prayer,
and in miracles, is indeed an inalienable factor in
the Christian view of the world. We shall devote
a particular section to this, because its range
borders on science with especial closeness.

i. That God's Providence rules over the world
down to its very smallest details, that in both
the small and the great requirements of life God
leads men like a Father, especially those who
know themselves to be children of God through
Christ, and that He gives them the conscious ex-
perience of this Fatherly guidance in their earthly
lot, — this is a self-evident factor in the Christian
view of the world. Jesus Christ, on Whom this
view is founded, Himself lived in this Faith and
proclaimed it.

The whole of that section in the " Sermon on the

Mount " which was directed against the anxious

172

PROVIDENCE, PRAYER, AND MIRACLES 173

spirit of care (Matthew vi. 25-34) is the locus
classicus for this faith, and we reproduce as it stands :
" Therefore I say unto you : Take no thought for
your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink ;
nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not
the life more than meat and the body than rai-
ment ? Behold the fowls of the air ; for they sow
not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet
your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
much better than they ? Which of you by taking
thought can add one cubit unto his stature ? And
why take ye thought for raiment ? Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not,
neither do they spin ; And yet I say unto you,
That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. Wherefore if God so clothe the
grass of the field which to-day is and to-morrow
is cast into the oven, shall He not much more
clothe you, O ye of little faith ? Wherefore take
no thought saying : What shall we eat ? or, What
shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed ? (For after all these things do the Gentiles
seek ;) for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things. But seek ye first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness and

174 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

all these things shall be added unto you. Take
therefore no thought for the morrow, for the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The
locus classicus for the conviction that God attends
at all times, even in times of danger, to the least
wants of His children, is in Matthew x. 29-31.
It runs thus: "Are not two sparrows sold for a
farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the
ground without your Father. But the very hairs
of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not there-
fore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."
Nor is Jesus disconcerted by the mysteries of
Providence, whether they are unhappy natural
dispositions, or violent deeds of men inflicted on
comparatively innocent people, or destructive ele-
mental forces. He simply draws from these events
wholesome moral and religious consequences, re-
jects uncharitable inferences, and refrains from
mentioning the mysterious background that re-
mains. He quietly leaves the solution of the
mystery to His Heavenly Father. Thus He says,
in John ix. 1 ff., of the man born blind : " Neither
did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the
works of God should be made manifest in him ".

AND MIRACLES 175

In Luke xiii. 1-5 He says of the Galileans who
had been killed by Pilate during their sacrifices :
" Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners
above all the Galileans, because they suffered
such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye
repent ye shall all likewise perish." And of the
eighteen men at Jerusalem who lost their lives by
a tower falling on them, He said just the same.

The Christian faith in Providence has its diffi-
culties. Let us add, it is bound to have them.
We must repeat here what we have already re-
ferred to (p. 165), that, according to all we can
see, God wishes not only to be a revealed but at the
same time a hidden God, because He wishes to
treat us as free creatures. He will not compel
recognition of Himself by proofs which are logi-
cally and mathematically unassailable ; what He
desires is to win grateful love with voluntary
homage from men who experience such effects of
Redeeming Love on themselves that they cannot
any longer doubt God on account of those mys-
teries of His Sovereignty which they are unable
to solve here below, so vast and wide is their
experience of all that He gives them and of the
possessions in which they feel themselves blest.

176 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

Any one who chooses to give up belief in a
Divine Providence can do so, and can support
his decision with reasons. To begin with, he may
refer to what we have called "the mystery of Pro-
vidence ". He may say : " What I see does not
constitute for me any mystery of Providence ;
it simply proves that there is no Divine Provi-
dence ". Moreover, he may add : " What you call
evident dispensations of Divine Providence are
mere events, the natural connections of which are
known ; consequently they are not occurrences
that have been designed by a determining Agent ".
He may say so, but he only raises greater diffi-
culties than are presented by belief in Providence.

To mention in the first place a difficulty which
is shared by belief in Providence — it is hazardous
to speak of occurrences and to say we are aware of
their natural connection. Every occurrence has
not only one cause, but, in addition to some
chief cause, numerous additional causes that com-
bine in groups which are continually changing
in the way of help, hindrance, or modification.
Who can disentangle these groups and find out
the entire sum of all the chief and the additional
causes ? The thing is impossible, for new material

AND MIRACLES 177

and new forces are always being discovered in the
world. How many may be as yet undiscovered
and yet be already operative ! However, we pass
over this difficulty, or rather this impossibility of
analysing exhaustively the natural concurrence
of any event. It besets all reflection on this
question of concurrence, whether one adopts an
affirmative or a negative position upon belief in
Providence.

Much graver is the difficulty for the opponent
of belief in Providence, if he founds his opposi-
tion on the further assertion, that to know the
natural concurrence of an event proves that this
event was not intended by a determining origin-
ator. This leads us back again to the same
elimination of teleology by causality which, in the
preceding section (pp. 157 f.), we mentioned, only to
reject it as incompatible with a vital religious view
of the world. And more. In face of the extra-
ordinary adaptation in great things as well as in
small; which confronts us in the world (whence in
the language of the classics it got the name cosmos
or mundus, i.e. " good order "), this idea meets with
far greater difficulties than the Christian view pre-
sents to its supporters, for Christianity sees in a

12

178 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

world thus fitted for a certain purpose and in-
habited by intelligent human beings, the work of
almighty power and of supreme intelligence in a
Living God. In fact, this difficulty, in the present
state of scientific knowledge, amounts to an in-
soluble problem. For the single principle, which
hitherto has been set up by science in order to
explain the origin of adaptation without the
operation of purposive causes in the origin and
wonderfully purposive structure of organisms, I
mean natural selection or the survival of the fittest
in the struggle for existence — this has proved itself
thoroughly inadequate for the purpose.

Over against these difficulties, those offered by
belief in Providence are decidedly smaller. But
it also has difficulties of its own. In especial let
us note that which we have mentioned already as
a mystery for faith in Providence ; I mean, unhappy
dispositions of life, an unfavourable environment
for the moral and religious development, human
acts of violence toward comparatively innocent
people, destructive natural elements, and in short
the whole army of evil with its vast and unfair
billeting.

Such mysteries remain mysteries ; but, to

AND MIRACLES 179

reassure men of a perfectly satisfactory solution
from the side of God, and of their own future
insight into that solution, the Christian concep-
tion can command not merely this world but —
what is most essential here — the world to come.
The awakening of life's energy, and especially of
voluntary self-sacrificing acts of love, which are
called forth by all the evils and especially by the
calamitous catastrophes, indicate how we are to
reconcile this mystery with faith in a God who
is Love, and, like Jesus, leave its solution con-
tentedly to Our Heavenly Father. In opposition
to these mysteries, there are such numerous and
obvious proofs of a Divine Providence, both in
the history of mankind, with the moral order of
the world that runs through it, and in the life-
story of the individual, which the Christian can
take as reminders of the Divine Guidance in his
own life, that he can be quite at rest about what
remains still mysterious to him.

A second difficulty which confronts Christian
faith in Providence runs parallel in the opposite
direction to the difficulty which we have just
described as lying in the way of the opponent of
belief in Providence. But again we can say, the

180 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

Christian's difficulty is less than his opponent's.
The upholder of faith in Providence also sees
himself in the midst of a world where everything,
so far as he can perceive it and so far as it is
not controlled by the actions of man's determining
personality, goes on its way by the necessity of
causal forces subject to law. He lives under the
conviction that all these occurrences are directed
by Supreme Intelligence, Almighty Power, Holi-
ness, and Love, to the salvation of mankind,
and yet he nowhere sees the place where, and
the way whereby, this Supreme Determining
Power takes hold of the course of Nature. His
experience is similar to ours when we cast a
glance at Reinke's "dominants". "They are
there, they are at work, but how and where is
a mystery to us." It is similar to our feelings
as we look at the primeval history of the earth
and its inhabitants. We see periods and places
where undoubtedly something absolutely new,
something specially purposive and aspiring, some-
thing that paves the way for a higher evolution,
enters into the course of the world ; we see the
origin of life, then the origin of consciousness, and
finally the origin of self- consciousness with the whole

AND MIRACLES 181

mental life of humanity striving after its goal.
But these occurrences always elude our scientific
observation. Well, we might content ourselves
with knowing that no one, not even Darwin,
has succeeded in proving that what is fitted to
a purpose, as we see that existing and occurring
in such sublime proportions throughout the
world, can arise or occur without a determining
reason. Still further. We might quiet ourselves
much more effectively with this other fact of
experience, viz. that, for one who knows he is a
child of God, the government of the world and the
Providence of God are equally true, whether he
can or cannot disentangle the threads which pro-
ceed from God and weave together the web of the
world's course.

Such is, in fact, the standpoint of the Christian.
Such must be his standpoint ; because the level
of his religion does not depend upon his degree of
acquaintance with affairs of the universe, but only
on the degree to which he is shut in with God.

Whoever handles the question of faith in Pro-
vidence in a scientific spirit, must be on the lookout
to see whether occurrences do not meet him in the
sphere of Nature which offer at least some analogy

182 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

to a Divine determining intervention in the course
of Nature, not to one which contradicts the opera-
tions of natural energies controlled by law, but to
one which harmonises with this operation of these
energies and avails itself of them. We find such
occurrences in the fact that man, together with
the higher animal world at the psychical stage
preliminary to human mental life, continually in-
terferes in the course of Nature, without annul-
ling that control by Nature according to which
natural forces are effective. Every voluntary
movement of the body, whether in consequence
of a resolve or not, is for us an unsolved, per-
haps an ever insoluble, mystery — although to our
consciousness it is no longer a mystery, because
it can be performed by a man without any reflec-
tion at all. The "ego" in man is something
immaterial. It inhabits the material body as its
organ, and depends on the life of this body, but
as the ego, as the centre of this human personality,
it is immaterial. This immaterial "ego" moves
the limbs at pleasure in this way or that, just as
the ego desires; it needs for every fresh move-
ment fresh nerves and muscles, but, for all that, it
does not require to have the least knowledge of

AND MIRACLES 183

anatomy or physiology. No one knows how to
account for the way in which the ''ego" acts, so
as to call into action now these nerves and muscles,
now those. None knows how the motion willed
by the " ego " is effected. Yet there it is. So far
as the movements of the human members can
be directed by the human mind to certain ends,
mankind, despite the restrictions imposed on its
powers by certain impassable barriers, has truly
achieved wonders in subduing and cultivating
Nature, in converting materials, energies, and
laws, into what should serve humanity in matters
of technique and industry ; nor is there any visible
end to the advances that may be made in this
process of subduing Nature to the purposes of
men. Man does all this without breaking the
laws of Nature; nay, he does it just because he
knows the materials and energies which he sub-
dues to his service, just because he can rely on
them working according to law, just because he
gives to their operation the direction he desires.
This justifies the conclusion that if man, who is
a creature of God, can make Nature serviceable
to his aims, without understanding the manner
and method of his action, how much more will the

184 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

Creator of Nature and her laws be able to guide
the same according to His Will, even without
showing us the place at which His Guiding
Hand comes into action !

Our religious conviction calls man the image of
God. That in this also we are scientifically ac-
curate, may be seen by a glance at the theory of
knowledge. Our perceptions, as well as the cate-
gories according to which we think, are all of sub-
jective origin, even where they are occasioned by
what is objective. But the fact that, with these
subjective perceptions and with these subjective
laws of thought, in the midst of which we employ
our perceptions, we work on Nature itself in so
truly wonderful a manner, and make it serve our
own aims, is for us an indisputable proof that
our subjective reason is essentially related to the
objective reason which rules throughout the uni-
verse.

In closing this discussion on faith in Providence,
I wish to direct attention to two publications
on this question which are well worth read-
ing: (i) Aids to an Appreciation of the Christian
Belief in Providence, by Dr. Willibald Beyschlag
(Halle, Eugen Strien, 1888), (2) Belief in Pro-

AND MIRACLES 185

vidence and Natural Science, a Lecture, by Dr. Otto
Kirn (Gr. Lichterfelde, Berlin ; Edwin Runge, 1903).
2. The question of answers to prayers has been
already answered by our discussion on faith in
Providence, and answered in the affirmative. He
who rejects belief in Providence will grant to
prayer at the most only a subjective, sedative
effect upon the mind of the petitioner. But he
who takes his stand on faith in Providence will
not only see in this calming influence an answer
on the part of the Living God, but will also be
persuaded — a persuasion which will be confirmed
by experience — that God, as the result of his
prayer, works upon the activity and passivity of
his fellow-men, — though in such a way, of course,
that He does not take from them the freedom of
their own decision : they can obey this operation
of God upon them or not, as they please. He will
also connect with this the further conviction that
God, in consequence of his prayer, makes certain
things happen in the course of the world which
would not have happened if he had not prayed.
Moreover, the answering of prayer is so emphati-
cally and repeatedly assured to us by the Founder
of the Christian Religion, that the conviction of

186 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

our prayers being heard is indeed an indispensable
factor in a Christian view of the world.

It is of course to be understood that Christianity
does not favour selfish, short-sighted entreaty to
God for earthly things. The fundamental prin-
ciple is the saying of Jesus in which He promises
that all prayers offered to God in His Name will
be heard. In John xvi. 23, He says: "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask
the Father in My Name, I will do it". But
prayer in the Name of Jesus involves not only the
conviction that the exalted Jesus intercedes for
us with His Heavenly Father to hear our prayers
as if they were His own, but also that we pray in
the spirit and mind of Jesus. And we know the
spirit of Jesus's prayers, not only from the prayer
which He Himself has taught us, the Lord's
Prayer, but also from His teaching on prayer
and from His own prayers.

When directed to the moral and religious state
of our hearts and the character of our deeds, He
makes no limitation to the hearing of our prayers,
but says in Luke xi. 13 : " If ye then, being evil,
know how to give good gifts unto your children ;
how much more shall your Father, which is in

AND MIRACLES 187

Heaven, give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
Him." Moreover, with regard to the final destiny
of His disciples He makes in His prayer no limita-
tion, but says in John xvii. 24 : " Father, I will
that those which Thou hast given Me, be with Me
where I am, that they may behold My Glory which
Thou hast given Me ". But as regards His own
fate, He prays in the agony in Gethsemane (Matt,
xxvi. 39) : " O My Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from Me : nevertheless not as I
will, but as Thou wilt ". In the Lord's Prayer
we find, with regard to what is earthly, this con-
cession granted to us, viz. that, according to the
fourth petition, during the time we have to live
on earth, we may pray every day for what is
necessary for life, and that our petitions will be
granted. While, according to the seventh petition,
we may not only experience a future redemption
from every evil in a state of perfection, and ask
for the attainment of this aim, but, with the
assurance of being heard, may even now ask that
God take away and keep from us what is harmful
to our inner man, so that, in consequence of this
prayer, we may be persuaded that those experiences
which in ordinary parlance are called evils, and

188 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

which cause us pain if they cross our path, are no
longer an evil for us but a beneficent means in
our education.

Finally, we must pronounce it an aberration
of religious fanaticism and a despising of the
Divine natural gifts and helpful intervention of
our fellow-men, if, in the assurance of our prayers
being heard, we were to imagine we could dispense
with medical aid and natural remedies.

3. We shall have to treat the question of mir-
acles in a more exhaustive fashion, because, in
consequence of the vast strides made by natural
science and the knowledge of how immutable and
subject to law are the operations of natural forces,
the idea of miracle has altered. It has been de-
fined in ways that ignore its religious meaning,
and only express the alleged conflict between faith
in occurrences of Nature that are subject to law,
and faith in miracles ; whereas the religious signi-
ficance of miracles is the chief thing in their
conception, compared with which all other con-
siderations are secondary.

That a conception of miracles which ignores
the religious interest has become the rule, is easy
to prove. I turn up, e.g., Meyer's small cyclopaedic

AND MIRACLES 189

dictionary and read thus : " miracle, according to
the dogmatic conception, is an event that runs
contrary to the laws of Nature, whereby God
interrupts the order of the universe. That mir-
acles are demonstrable is denied by science." Any
one who has thought himself into the idea of
miracles held by a religiously minded man, will
find in this definition of a miracle almost as
many inaccuracies as it contains words. How
can a religiously minded man for a moment en-
tertain the idea that God could ever interrupt the
order of the universe ? Surely this order of the
universe itself comes from God, Who is a God of
order. Where the religious man sees anything new,
he sees not an interruption but a development of
the order of the universe in the line of realising
that end to which God is leading mankind.

Then as for the question whether an event
is contrary to the laws of Nature or not, the
uneducated religious man does not trouble him-
self about it ; he is only concerned with the
question as to whether the event indicates God's
Sovereignty or not ; whereas the educated be-
liever, in the case of an event which he terms
a miracle, and which he cannot explain from

190 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

the general context of Nature, would first try to
be sure whether this event really took place.
Such an event, e.g., as, to choose the most strik-
ing of all examples in story, that contained in
Joshua x., the sun and moon standing still during
Joshua's battle against the Amorites, he will
see fit to deny for many reasons. At the same
time he will be perfectly able to understand
psychologically how such a narrative could arise.
Such an event would certainly have been an
" interruption of the order of the universe," nor
could one think of a more radical bouleversement.
But where he has reason to assume from the
narrative of a miracle that it has really happened,
he will then draw the conclusion that a new force, •
unknown to him and perhaps unknown to all man-
kind, has come into operation and entered into
the course of Nature. But he cannot admit that
this new force, of which he has hitherto been
unaware, should contradict those laws of Nature
of which he is aware, because, according to his
conviction, God is the Originator of all the laws
of Nature and will not call anything into exist-
ence that is contrary to His own order. Finally,
no science can start by denying that an event

AND MIRACLES 191

which we call a miracle can have actually hap-
pened ; it can only, with all the aids of historical
research, examine the question whether it has
happened.

For our religious thought and feeling everything
is a miracle that indicates the sovereignty of a
living God, or that guarantees one who either
performs or experiences miracles as a person com-
missioned by God. Thus to the religious man
the entire universe as a whole and in its details
is a miracle. The creation of the human race in
particular and the leading of them to become
children of God by the preparation for and send-
ing of Jesus Christ as redeemer, is to the religious
man one great, unique, harmonious miracle, which
unfolds itself in the chief epochs of the story of
salvation by single miracles, and finally issues in
one great central miracle by the Coming, Person,
and Work of Jesus Christ. Similarly the Divine
Guidance of his life is to the religious man a
combination of miracles, even where he sees be-
fore him the natural causes of the events; for
these events are a miracle to him.

With this all-inclusive significance of the idea
of miracles, — which, however, does not at all ex-

192 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

elude the grouping of miracles in varying degrees
of value, or an inquiry whether separate miracles
that are related really happened, — we stand on
entirely the same ground as that on which we
have to discover the amended conception of mir-
acles, viz. on the ground of Holy Scripture.

The entire Old Testament is full of utterances
in which all the works and deeds of God in Nature
and history, especially in the history of Israel,
are called miracles.

Even the individual man is a miracle of God (Ps.
exxxix. 14) : " I will praise Thee ; for I am fear-
fully and wonderfully made : marvellous are Thy
works ; and that my soul knoweth right well ". The
107th Psalm is especially instructive for the idea
that even such ways of God as we are able to
understand in their natural context, are called
miracles. It begins with this fundamental theme :
" O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good,
for His mercy endureth for ever". Then, in
turn, travellers are first brought before our view,
who wander in the desert and must suffer hunger
and thirst, but at their request are led again by
God to the right road. Then we have prisoners,
who at their request are set at liberty again by

AND MIRACLES 193

God ; then sick people, who after crying to God
are healed ; and finally sea-farers, who are threat-
ened with loss of life by storm, but at their re-
quest find the ocean calm and so can reach their
haven. Each time it is said of each of these groups
in a similarly recurring form: "Let them praise
the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful
works to the children of men ".

I said above, in my definition of the religious con-
ception of miracles, that it in no way excludes a
grouping of miracles according to their respective
values. We shall now go further and admit that
the religious conception of miracles comprises in
itself such a classification of miracles. For if the
religious man calls everything in the world, in
mass as well as in detail, a miracle of God, then
miracles in the narrower sense of the word, i.e. the
events or acts that diverge from ordinary occur-
rences, and through the very novelty of their
features, draw special attention to the sovereignty
of God in aims that He has in store for mankind
— follow for him as a matter of course. These
miracles, in the narrower sense of the term, coin-
cide with what in ordinary parlance are called

miracles, except that the religious man who thinks

13

194 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

scientifically will not admit that these miracles
in any way run contrary to the laws of Nature.
We will prove this later on in the discussion of
miracles as " Acts of Power ". But even this dis-
tinction of miracles in the limited and less limited
sense is not rigid ; it has shifting boundaries, as
e.g. in the case of some of the miracles of heal-
ing that Jesus wrought, of which one part was
analogous to acts of healing otherwise exercised
on the physical sufferings of individual men, even
of those who in no way accept a religious view of
the world.

Moreover, the names by which miracles are
described in the original, both in the Old and
in the New Testament, answer exactly to the
idea of miracle which we propose. The Hebrew
and the Greek nouns for miracles signify either
" something astonishing," or "acts and energies,"
or " signs ". The word " astonishing " corresponds
exactly to the Latin noun " miraculum," from
whence is derived the English word " miracle".

This suits what we must, in distinction to
the occurrences of Nature known to us, name
" miracles" in the narrower sense, because these
miracles rouse our astonishment precisely through

AND MIRACLES 195

the new and unexpected element in them ; but it
also suits the recurring millions and millions of
natural occurrences surrounding us everywhere,
which the religious man, according to our theory,
also calls " miracles," on the ground that they point
to the working of a Living God. For these natural
occurrences become for the religious man astonish-
ing revelations of the sovereignty of a Living God,
because he recognises in them a harmony of order ;
especially in organisms, and above all in the or-
ganic structure visible in the life of man, he sees
an adaptability to purpose in the structure, and a
harmonious concatenation of all the organs, work-
ing towards an aim, which the mere category of
final causes and final effects cannot satisfactorily
explain. These compel us to recognise a Supreme
Intelligence and an Almighty Power directing all.
This excites our wonder, because we see the work-
ings of this Power and Reason, and yet nowhere can
we either name the place where, or fix the way how,
they intervened with effective control in the course
of Nature. This last problem in all natural events
compels even "monists," who dispute the exist-
ence of aim in the world and the sovereignty of a
Living Personal God, to speak of "miracles";

196 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

even Häckel's latest book is entitled The Miracles,
or Wonders, of Life.

The second name for miracles, which recurs
frequently in the New Testament, the name
" energies " or "acts of energy," generally trans-
lated by Luther " deeds," shows us with especial
clearness that the religious conception of miracle
is far remote from any thought of an interruption
to the laws of Nature. For with the designation
" energies," " miracles " are put into the same cate-
gory as any other operative force in Nature and
in human life, all of these being traced back by
the religious mind to a Divine origin. All that
is conveyed by the designation of miracles as
" energies," is that they point in a specially strik-
ing and direct way to the Divine Originator of
this "energy". The name "energies" or "acts
of energy " for miracles was certainly applied at
a time when the conception of a law of Nature
as immutable had in no way — or at most in sudden
flashes of inspiration, as in Psalm cxlviii. 5 and
6 — dawned upon man ; but it fits in very well to
our modern knowledge of the reign of law over
the energies operative in the world, and also shows
that, even for the most advanced knowledge of

AND MIRACLES 197

Nature in our day, the recognition of miracles
certainly does not involve belief in an interrup-
tion of the laws of Nature. When anything
occurs, it means an energy or group of energies
coming into operation and thereby superseding
the other energies for some time, without affect-
ing the reign of law over what has temporarily
been called into operation, or over the forces
which have been momentarily put aside. In the
case of miracles in the narrower sense, we see
with especial clearness that the Sovereignty of a
Living God is behind what happens ; but whether
God works directly in these events or through
intervening causes yet unknown to us, whether
these intervening causes are forces which now
come into existence for the first time, or forces
already present with all their laws of operation,
which are unloosed now for the first and only time,
or only at rare intervals, lying latent during the
intervening periods — all this, I repeat, lies hidden
from our view. That God in all He does, even in
His exceptional wonders designated as "acts of
energy," works in no unmethodical aimless way,
but in harmony with all His other actions and in
perfect conformity to a purpose, this we take as

198 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

unquestionable. But that does not exclude ex-
ceptional acts of energy pointing to the Divine
Sovereignty in an exceptional way.

This leads us to the third designation of mira-
cles as " signs," which is also extremely common.
Miracles are called signs, partly because they
point to the Sovereignty of God, partly because
they prove him who performs them to be a
messenger with a commission from God and
equipped for this commission with special powers.

With regard to this designation of miracle as
"sign," the question of primary importance is
what degree of proof attaches to miracles, in the
mind and teaching of Jesus Christ, particularly
to those miracles which interest us most deeply
as Christians, namely those which the evangelic
narratives declare to have been performed by
Jesus. By way of answer, we get the remarkable
assurance that they are merely of secondary value
as proofs. The primary proof of divine credentials
possessed by messengers of God must lie in the
immediate impression produced by their person
and their words. When Jesus saw Himself sur-
rounded by unbelieving people, He performed no
signs "because of their unbelief". When people

AND MIRACLES 199

expressly asked Him for signs as a condition of
faith in Him, He refused their request. Even
when He had reason to suspect an unexpressed
desire for signs, He said to them in rebuke : " If
you see signs and wonders, yet will ye not be-
lieve ". But where faith in Him already existed,
He readily aided it by showing His miraculous
power; He revivified thereby a faith already ex-
isting and made it still stronger, often adding ex-
pressly : " Thy faith hath made thee whole ".

This standpoint which Jesus Himself assumed
with regard to the question of miracles, shows us
in our own day how to view the acceptance or re-
jection of faith in miracles.

Acceptance or rejection of faith in miracles
stands in most vital connection with our view of
the world. A naturalistic view has no place for
faith in miracles. It lacks the obvious supposition
for all such faith, viz., the recognition of a Living
and Almighty God Who rules the world, and
the recognition of any purposive tendency. On
the naturalistic view, the human individual ceases
with death, and the whole human race is going
to annihilation — what room is there for miracles ?
The supporters of a naturalistic view can at most

200 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

use the name " miracle " metaphorically for what-
ever still exists in the occurrences of Nature that
they cannot yet explain. When accounts of mir-
acles in the narrower sense cross their path, they
simply explain that they are impossible, and there-
fore that they never happened, no matter how
striking are the proofs for their occurrence ; others
they may declare as, e.g., some cases of healing
the sick, to be occurrences which can be ade-
quately accounted for within the sphere of natural
conditions.

The position of a supporter of the teleological,
theistic, and especially the Christian view of the
world toward the question of miracles, is entirely
different.

When miracles in the narrower sense are re-
lated to him, he will certainly feel himself bound
to ascertain, with all available means of historical
and psychological research, whether what is related
has really happened, and whether one has reason
to assume that it happened exactly as it is said to
have done. But he will not at the outset reject
the miracle as impossible, and therefore as never
having occurred. The possibility of miracle is in-
volved, for him, in the seriousness of his faith that

AND MIRACLES 201

an Almighty God is Creator and Guide of the
world. And the probability, nay, the certainty,
that miracles in the narrower sense have happened,
can still happen, and will happen, is bound up for
him in his conviction that the whole human race
and the separate personalities of men have been
created by God capable of and responsible for
moral freedom, born with the capacity and in-
stinct for moral perfection, i.e. for a goal as yet
unattained. Now, when aims not yet attained
are in question, it is no longer possible to exclude
miracles in the narrower sense of the word. For
the essence of miracles in the narrower sense con-
sists in the emergence of something new, some-
thing that draws attention to the Sovereignty of
God and to the goal towards which He is leading
the children of men. Above all, when he who
takes his stand on a Christian view of the world
recognises in Jesus Christ his own and the world's
Redeemer from sin and death, and when through
Him he has learnt to know God as his Heavenly
Father and to have communion with Him, he will
no doubt be scrupulous in observing the necessary
precautions against accepting isolated accounts
of miracles, but he will be inclined at the outset

202 PROVIDENCE, PRAYER

to assume that this elevation of mankind to the
state of Redemption and the position of God's chil-
dren, and especially the appearance and work of
the Redeemer, has revealed something new in the
experience of mankind, revealed it, i.e., through
miracles. We shall see, in our next section, with
what cogent reasons the greatest of all recorded
miracles, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, compels recognition as an historical fact.
Any one who sees himself compelled to recog-
nise this fact will not be deterred from confessing
his belief in miracles by the reproach of backward-
ness in scientific knowledge, a reproach hurled at
those who believe in miracles. By the very cau-
tion of the criticism with which he approaches
the record of miracles in the narrower sense, he
will be in a position to show whether or not he
is to be numbered among those who are retrograde
in science. He may find himself compelled to
assign the whole universe in mass as well as in
detail to miracles in the wider sense, and above
all to include his own existence and the course of
his own life ; yet this constitutes for him a peren-
nial fount of joy, a rich and overflowing compensa-
tion for any reproach of scientific backwardness.

AND MIRACLES 203

It is a matter for rejoicing to see that even
scientists, e.g. Dr. E. Dennert in his book The
Bible and Science (Stuttgart, Kielmann, 1904), stand
up so bravely and ably for faith in miracles as
based upon faith in an Almighty and Living God.
Among theologians who have grasped the idea of
miracle so as to make its religious character the
central point of the conception, instead of any
contradiction of miracle with the laws of Nature,
I would mention the late Willibald Beyschlag,
who treats of faith in miracles in the volume
already mentioned upon Christian faith in Pro-
vidence, and in still more detail in the first volume
of his Life of Jesus (Halle, Strien, first ed., 1885)
as well as in his New Testament Theology (1896,
same publisher). Albrecht Ritschl also (1822-89),
in the Annual of German Theology for 1861, pro-
posed a conception of miracle which makes the reli-
gious and teleological significance the central point,
thus avoiding the possibility of any collision be-
tween Science and Christianity. In my book on the
Darwinian theories (1876) I have myself treated
the whole question of Providence, with answers to
prayer and miracles, in a special paragraph (par. 39)
which enters into greater detail than the present
pages. My position there is the same as I hold now.

CHAPTER V

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST

An inquiry into the relations between Science and
Christianity has finally to include the person of
Jesus Christ Himself within the circle of its dis-
cussions. The Biblical accounts of His virgin birth,
of the miracles He performed, and of His Resur-
rection, compel us to take this step.

For us Christians, Jesus Christ in His Person
and in His Work alike is utterly unique among
all men. He is unique in His Person. He is
indeed truly human and as such has shared the
sufferings and death of sinful man. But He is
at the same time the sinless, perfect Son of God,
Who as the Personal Revelation of God stands
unique amid humanity. And He is unique in
His Work. He has redeemed mankind from sin
and death, and has become thereby the One
Mediator between God and man. For those

reasons we cannot admit the right of Science to

204

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 205

attack the uniqueness of the Person and career
of Jesus, because it finds no such analogy among
other men. It is this very uniqueness that lifts
Him above the criticism of science. It is only
historical research, next to the direct religious
experience that we ourselves personally enjoy
through Him, that has any right to speak, because
its business is to discuss with us the question
whether we have any right or reason to assume
that what is told of Him really happened. As far
as historical research has to answer this question
in the affirmative, its results do fall within the
circle of Science, but only in the sense that Science
has to see how it can adjust itself to facts which
it cannot deny, but which on the other hand are
not analogous to the results otherwise attained by
scientific investigation.

Well, in the case of the three unique stories
of the life of Jesus, historical research reaches
dissimilar results. In the case of the stories of
the virgin birth of Jesus, it has to confess its
ignorance. The records of Jesus having often
performed many miracles, it finds valid, but it
must be deemed possible that, in the decades
between the life of Jesus and the composition of

206 THE PERSON OF

the Gospels, the account of several miracles has
been embellished, if it does not owe its origin to
the unconscious and inventive religious imagina-
tion. The account of Jesus's Resurrection is found
also credible, even though a harmony of all the
individual features in the different narratives is
not feasible, while the possibility is not to be
excluded that one or another trait may have been
added by unconscious and inventive religious
feeling. We shall try to prove this briefly in
detail.

i. The Account of the Virgin Birth of Jesus

The virgin birth of Jesus is narrated in the
Gospels of Matthew and Luke; but all through
the record of the birth and childhood of Jesus,
the two gospels differ so widely from one another
that they defy any verbal harmony.

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a register
of births which traces Jesus through forty-two
ancestors from Joseph, Mary's husband, past David
back to Abraham. Thereupon it relates that Mary,
Joseph's bride, was found to be with child before
her marriage. Joseph took her therefore to be a
fallen woman, though he did not wish openly to

JESUS CHRIST 207

reprove her, but to put her away privately.
Thereupon an angel of the Lord appeared to him
in a dream and explained to him that Mary was
with child by the Holy Ghost, and would bear a
Son whose Name should be called Jesus (Saviour),
for He should save His people from their sins.
On awaking, Joseph took his wife home, and
when she bore a son he called Him Jesus.

Now when Jesus was born at Bethlehem in
Judaea, there appeared wise men from the East
in Jerusalem, led thither by a star, and asking
after the new-born King of the Jews. King Herod
directed them to Bethlehem, on the ground of
information received from the scribes concerning
the prophesied birth-place of the Messiah. There,
under the guidance of the star, they found the
Child, paid Him homage, and returned another
way home, being warned by a dream. Joseph
also, in consequence of a warning received in
a dream, fled with the mother and Child into
Egypt. Then came the slaughter of the innocents
at Bethlehem, and after the death of Herod the
return of the holy family to Judaea. But because
Joseph was afraid of Archelaus, the son of Herod,
who had become King in Judaea instead of his

208 THE PERSON OF

father Herod, he settled down with his family in
Galilee and took up his abode in Nazareth.

Luke's account is different. He begins with
the account of the wonderful prophecy and birth
of John the Baptist, according to the message
of the angel Gabriel, a child granted to a
hitherto childless and aged priest and his wife.
Then he relates the Annunciation to Mary in
Nazareth, by the same angel, that she should be
with child of the Holy Ghost and should bear a
Son and call His name Jesus, and that He should
be the Messiah. Mary then visits her relative
Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, of
whose pregnancy the angel Gabriel had likewise
told her. At this, both mothers mutually give
utterance to their hopes in prophetically inspired
words, while Zacharias, the father of John, speaks
in prophecy on the occasion of his son's circum-
cision. And now through a decree of Caesar
Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,
Joseph and Mary come to Bethlehem the city of
David. There the birth of Jesus takes place in
deepest poverty in a stable, but is announced to
pious shepherds in the field by the angel of
the Lord, whereupon they hear the multitude of

JESUS CHRIST 209

the heavenly host praising God. The shepherds
then go and pay homage to the Child. After
eight days follow the circumcision and the naming
of Jesus ; then, forty days after His Birth, the
customary presentation in the temple at Jeru-
salem, where the new-born Babe is saluted as the
Messiah by the aged Simeon and Anna. Then
the parents return to their home in Nazareth.

Luke gives us also a genealogical tree of Joseph
that goes back past David. He puts it into his
gospel after the narrative of the baptism of Jesus
by John. This genealogical tree does not only go
back, like that of Matthew, to Abraham but to
Adam. Yet in the numbers and in the names
of the ancestors, it differs widely from that of
Matthew. At the very beginning the father of
Joseph is not called Jacob as is the case in
Matthew, but Heli, while in Matthew the line
goes from David through Solomon and in Luke
through Nathan. Nor do the two narratives
agree in their wording. Their difference shows
that in the primitive Christian circles a coherent
tradition concerning the circumstances of the birth
of Jesus did not exist. The narratives refer back

to different sources of tradition. Beyschlag con-

14

210 THE PERSON OF

jectures in his Life of Jesus (vol. i.) that Matthew
reproduced an oral tradition in plain language,
but that Luke used two written sources, in his
first chapter a poetical, in the second chapter one
more historical.

To this difference of the two reports must be
added the further circumstance that neither the
Gospel of Mark nor of John, nor any other New
Testament writing, knows anything about the
virgin birth of Jesus, that Paul in his unques-
tionably genuine Epistle to the Romans (i. 3 and 4)
and Peter in his discourse on the day of Pentecost
(Acts ii. 30) seem to presuppose the Davidic
descent of Jesus through Joseph, and that there
is no trace, in the missionary activity of the early
Church, that any allusion was made to a virgin
birth of Jesus.

With these historical facts, finally, we must
correlate the theological consideration that our
conviction of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ's
Divine Sonship does not require a virgin birth.

We see in Him a new scion who has been
grafted from above into the genealogical tree of
sinful humanity. But this is just as conceivable
if He were begotten of parents, as if He were

JESUS CHRIST 211

born of a virgin. For even in the latter case
the hereditary sin which the newly born son of
a mother would bring into the world would have
to be overcome by a divine New Creation of
His ethical condition, just as surely as in the
first case.

We may not therefore depreciate the Christian
heritage of those who doubt or deny the virgin
birth of Jesus for the reasons just outlined, as
though that heritage were inferior to the saving
experience of those who, on the ground of two
Bible narratives, affirm the virgin birth. Bey-
schlag, who for a long time accepted the virgin
birth and then gradually felt himself compelled
to reject it, shows in his Life of Jesus how
tenderly and with what deep religious feeling
one can from this standpoint do justice to the
origin, the beauty, and the relative truth of the
records.

On the other hand, we cannot go further than
the admission that historical research has con-
cluded it can say nothing either about the virgin
birth of Jesus or about His generation by Joseph
and Mary. It cannot deny either one or the
other. For if a virgin birth took place, this

212 THE PERSON OF

remained, according to all rules of psychology, a
sacred secret to Joseph and Mary, which only in
very rare moments, perhaps far distant from one
another in point of time, was communicated to one
or another of their trusty intimate friends in a
confidential way. This would explain how such
disjointed and fragmentary reports could result
in such different accounts as are contained in the
gospels of Matthew and Luke. Moreover, it is
self-evident that it could not have been God's
purpose that allusions to the exceptional character
of His birth should aid faith in Jesus as the
Redeemer of the world. This would be in con-
tradiction to all that we know of the substance
of the first missionary sermons of Christendom.
The impression of the Person of Jesus, of His
Word and of His Work, that is what must waken
and maintain and ripen faith — not any news about
some physical miracle whereby He came into the
world.

Little as we can prove the virgin birth of
Jesus with the aid of historical research, as little
then can we deny it. Nor can we deny its
possibility on the ground of natural science. If
Jesus had simply been a man like ourselves,

JESUS CHRIST 213

even though He had been the greatest of religious
geniuses that has ever appeared among mankind,
then natural science would certainly have had
ample right to assert, on the analogy of all ex-
perience, that He did not come into the world
in any other way than we do, i.e., by parental
generation. But it is a fact of experience that
with the coming of Jesus into the world something
utterly new and supreme has become a permanent
part of humanity. The language of Christian
piety calls this new thing "the Kingdom of God,"
or " the Kingdom of Heaven " ; in individual men,
it is redemption from sin and death, sonship with
God, and eternal life. Now science, for all its
concrete clearness, does not know by what way,
even prior to the creation of man, God called
into existence the new and higher forms of
existence which have successively appeared on
the earth. If the conjecture is well-founded that
markedly higher organisms were originated, not
by gradual but by spasmodic evolution, then we
are quite ignorant as to whether these new and
higher organisms, which thus spasmodically ap-
pear, may not have come into existence through
this very medium of parthenogenesis (i.e. through

214 THE PERSON OF

a virgin birth). Above all, we do not know cir-
cumstantially and clearly how God called man
into existence, even supposing we assume that He
created him on a previous basis in the animal
world. The thought of parthenogenesis at once
suggests itself at this point. Now the sending
of the Redeemer is the last, the greatest, and
the climax of God's new creations on earth. It is
also the only one that falls within the temporal
limits of human history. Hence the possibility
that this last of God's new creations was called
into being by parthenogenesis, is not to be denied,
for, on the analogy of all His dealings with us,
God may have let a veil fall over the history of
this occurrence, which leaves room for doubt.
Here the law manifest throughout all the great
questions of human life would apply, viz., that God
declares Himself to be not only a revealed but
also a hidden God, because, instead of desiring
to force the recognition of Himself and His
Sovereignty by the weight of logic or irrefutable
inductive proofs, He would gain that recognition
by the trustful devotion of man's heart to Himself.
Moreover, a glance at the Person and Work of
Jesus will make us content with this view. Where

JESUS CHRIST 215

so much is revealed, where, above all, whatever
promotes our salvation and peace is so accessible,
we need not wonder if a veil is drawn over Jesus's
entrance into the world, a veil which we can
hardly raise, if we can raise it at all.

The result of our investigations, then, is, that
we must not deny the full possession of salvation
to those who doubt or deny the virgin birth of
Jesus, nor must we charge those who affirm it with
lack of science, nor again must we deny to those
who are contented to be ignorant the courage of
confession or joy in believing. The question of joy
in believing does not come up at all here, for the
essence of faith does not consist in maintaining
the truth of a narrative or a doctrine, although such
maintenance must have a place of its own in faith ;
it consists in trust The original language of the
New Testament has the same word for faith and
trust. Trust in Jesus, in the case of those who
confess that they do not know the manner of His
birth, and in the case of those who assume that
Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary, may be just
as great as in the case of those who affirm the
virgin birth of Jesus.

216 THE PERSON OF

2. The Miracles of Jesus
On the miracles of Jesus I can state my views
more briefly, as almost everything essential to this
problem has already been discussed in the third
part of the section on Providence, answers to
prayer, and miracles.

That Jesus performed many miracles, and
specially that He healed many sick in a wonder-
ful way, is beyond all doubt. Not only are the
four evangelists at one on this, but the other
New Testament writings, many of which are
earlier than the Gospels, assume it as indisput-
able. Men like Paul were conscious — and their
experience bore them out — that they themselves
and the other first witnesses of Jesus, as well as
whole congregations, such as that of the Church
at Corinth, had received from Jesus Himself power
to perform miracles. The contents of the very
first sermon on Jesus amount to this, that Jesus
died and rose again for us and proved Himself by
word and deed to be the Son of God — the Messiah.

As for the separate accounts of miracles, it
must be admitted that in the decades between
Jesus and the origin of the four Gospels, this or
that story may have arisen in the course of time,

JESUS CHRIST 217

or have gradually been adorned with various ad-
ditions. Critical historical research concerning
the recorded miracles will therefore never be at
rest. Its results will vary according to the indi-
vidual character of the investigator and of his
readers, and often enough a choice of alternatives
will be left open. Let not that disturb us. We
have shown above (p. 202) that Jesus Himself
ranks His miracles only in the second place as a
proof of His Divine mission, and that this must
remain our standpoint to-day. We can therefore,
without any disquiet, doubt or surrender one or
another characteristic in the record of a miracle,
or even the entire narrative of a miracle, without
introducing confusion into our conviction of Jesus's
miraculous power, and of the value His miracles
had and still have for faith. Moreover, we need
not be disturbed when attempts are made, in the
case of several of His miracles, to correlate His
power with certain " energies " in the natural
situation of man, as e.g., in the case of several
instances of the healing of sick people, although
this does not apply to every case, and in particular
is irrelevant to the case of those whom Jesus
healed at a distance. Certainly one could not go

218 THE PERSON OF

as far as Beyschlag, who, in his Life of Jesus
(vol. i., 3rd ed., p. 326), when discussing the
account of the changing of water into wine at
the wedding at Cana (John ii. 1-11), tries to avoid
the impression of magic by thinking of an analogy
in hypnotic suggestion, thus transferring the mir-
acle from the water-pots to an illusion of the
senses on the part of the wedding-guests. That
would have been no manifestation of His Glory
such as is intended by the evangelist who re-
lates the miracle. Surely here it is more advis-
able to admit simply that one does not understand
the occurrence. Nor does Dennert help us, when,
in his book on The Bible and Natural Science (p.
307), he adduces proof that in this miracle it is
a question, not of the new creation of elements
that were not already at hand in the house-, but
only of some sudden and new combination of the
same. Water consists of hydrogen and oxygen ;
wine, as regards its chief ingredients, of alcohol
and sugar. The latter, like the other ingredients
of wine, are composed of hydrogen, oxygen and
carbon. Now hydrogen and oxygen are found in
water, oxygen also in the air, and carbon in car-
bonic acid, which is always present in the air ; so

JESUS CHRIST 219

that all the chemical elements of which wine
consists were already in the house. But, how the
water suddenly turned to wine at the will of
Jesus, is surely not made more intelligible to us
by the fact that the chemical elements of the
wine were already at hand ; although, at the
same time, it is not to be denied that some
reference to the natural surroundings of a miracle
has generally a bearing of its own.

It is not, however, our business to discuss
single miracles of Jesus. Our task is to investi-
gate the attitude of Science towards the miracu-
lous narratives in the life of Jesus. If we can lay
down a general principle, controlling this attitude,
we are saved any inquiry into individual instances.
Now, we have already (p. 199 f.) paved the
way for such a general principle, by proving that
the thought of an interruption of the laws of
Nature was remote from the religious and biblical
conception of miracles, and that this conception
is disposed to rank ordinary and extraordinary
occurrences alike under the category of miracle.

On this view, Science has no occasion to deny his-
torical and religious inquiry the right of discussing
the question whether Jesus performed miracles in

220 THE PERSON OF

the narrower sense, or to monopolise such inquiries.
The decision for or against faith in miracles is
arrived at, not in the sphere of natural science,
but in metaphysics, and in consequence of our
general view of the universe. For any one who
completely denies purpose in the world or the
Existence and Sovereignty of an Almighty Power
and a Supreme Intelligence, there can be no
miracle at all. But whoever affirms both, for
him the whole world is full of wonders ; and
whenever a man admits that these purposes of
life are not yet achieved, but are only in process
of being worked out, it becomes self-evident that
new incidents in life, which refer to such processes
and purposes, i.e. miracles in the narrower sense,
have happened and can still happen. The deeper
a man's mind, the less will it be shackled by ideas
of any arbitrariness in God's so-called method of
originating miracles or of revising His own works ;
and miracles (in a narrower sense) of whose re-
ality he is convinced, will appear in ever closer
connection with those aims towards which God
is leading man and the Universe. It is necessary
to say this ; for not only may faith in miracles,
if uncontrolled by thought, lead to serious errors,

JESUS CHRIST 221

but one often reads and hears that for those who
believe in miracles God must always be correc-
ting His own work, or that He acts according
to caprice and arbitrary choice.

Finally, the answer to the question, how did
Jesus Himself regard His own miracles, may also
show the wide outlook on things which His mir-
acles open before us. Before Jesus performed His
first miracle, He had the consciousness of pos-
sessing the gift of miracles, not in order to use it
for personal ends, but to bring about the speedy
coming of the Kingdom of God. This is shown
us by the story of the temptation, which occurs
in the period between His Baptism by John the
Baptist and His entrance upon the public ministry.
Pity for the physical and mental needs of those
who turned to Him for help, caused Him at first
and most frequently to perform a miracle ; next
to that, the perception of a faith on the part of sup-
pliants which He sought to raise to some higher
level by granting their request. The Kingdom of
God, which He was conscious of heralding, had
its complete realisation for Him, not only in re-
moving the feeling of distance from God and
annulling the moral woes of man, but also in

222 THE PERSON OF

liberating men from evil and death, and in a per-
fect transfiguration and re-creation of the world,
where sin, evil, and death would have no more
place, but where the purpose of God for men
would be for ever attained. From this point of
view, the miracles of Jesus were to Him, as they
are still to us, prophetic deeds by which He who
inaugurated the Heavenly Kingdom guaranteed its
final and eternal perfection at the very moment of
its establishment.

3. The Resurrection of Jesus

The question of the resurrection of Jesus alone
remains. In discussing it we touch on the one
hand one of the central foundations of the Christian
certainty of salvation, and on the other we raise
one point where Science would have had the right
and duty to contradict the fact in question, did
not Jesus in His Person, as in His career, stand
out unique among men, and were not the proofs
of the reality of His Resurrection of overpowering
weight.

To begin with, there is one proven historical
fact, sublime and indubitable, viz. that all the
preaching of that Gospel with which the apostles

JESUS CHRIST 223

and their co-workers and successors went to the
world, culminated in the proclamation of two
facts as the foundation of man's assurance of
salvation : Jesus Christ, the Son of God Our Lord
and Master, has died, and is risen again for us. By
this they did not mean the beginning of another
and a blessed life after death, as was the hope for
all who had lived a holy life. No missionary or
martyr zeal could they have drawn from that.
What they understood by the Resurrection was
the real and complete victory over death which
Jesus gained on Good Friday by His innocence
and voluntary obedience to the will of His
Heavenly Father, a victory which consisted in
the revivifying of His dead body to a glorified and
heavenly existence which was for ever safe from
mortality, a victory in which Jesus showed Him-
self the conqueror of all that is called sin and
death, Lord of the Kingdom of Heaven, one Who
gives His Holy Spirit to those who believe on
Him, and one Who is with them always even unto
the end of the world, directing the Kingdom of
God to its final perfecting.

The success which attended this preaching of
a Gospel in which the proclamation of the Resur-

224. THE PERSON OF

rection of Jesus, side by side with the proclamation
of His Crucifixion, formed the central point, has
been of unparalleled significance in the history of
mankind. Hitherto, indeed, it has penetrated
with success only to one third of mankind, but still
with unabated, and in fact increasing impetus, it
continues its missionary activity throughout the
world. Despite the horrors which illegitimate
appeals to religion and Christianity produced ere
long within their national life, the nations which
accepted Christianity have attained the highest
level of civilisation on earth. And millions upon
millions of individuals who have truly and inwardly
appropriated Christianity, are thereby endowed
with the forgiveness of sins, sonship towards God,
and eternal life — a veritable treasure of spiritual
blessing, which is allied to an ever-increasing
moral power and purity and activity, such as no
other religion that has ever appeared in the world
offers to its adherents. Here, if anywhere, are
Jesus's words valid: " By their fruits ye shall know
them". In face of this noblest and most precious
of all fruits on the tree of mankind, the vital growth
of the gospel of Jesus's Death and Resurrection,
we are entitled to ask : Is this faith of the disciples

JESUS CHRIST 225

in the Resurrection of Jesus founded on real historical
facti on the real awakening of Jesus from the grave,
in the sense in which we have already defined it ?

At the outset, we must premise that the Resur-
rection of Jesus is not such a generally recognised
fact as the murder of Julius Caesar, or the battle
of Leipzig. We cannot and must not expect that,
when we consider the way in which God generally
reveals Himself and His salvation to mankind.
We have already had occasion to refer to the fact
that in all the crucial questions of life, God is
either a hidden or a revealed God, according to
man's attitude to Him. The recognition of God
and of His saving work cannot be the logical result
of observations which man could not deny, even if
he wished to ; it must be a free ethical act of the
inner man, — of the soul. If this act is accom-
plished, then man sees himself surrounded by
revelations of God and by proofs that his faith is
true. But any one who chooses to refuse to recog-
nise God and His work of salvation, is at liberty
to do so ; he can give reasons for it, and, if he
has the necessary mental equipment, he can build
these up into a regular scientific system. The

latter process, e.g. in reference to the question of

15

226 THE PERSON OF

the Resurrection, has been followed by Strauss in
his two versions of The Life of Jesus, and in his
Old and New Faith, which gives us his entire view
of the world in compact compass. He does not
shrink from summing up his results in the follow-
ing words (second ed., p. 72 ff.). " Viewed his-
torically, i.e., when the vast effects of this faith
are correlated with its utter baselessness, the story
of the Resurrection may be described as a humbug
in the history of the world." From any one who
confesses to such a philosophy of history, which
regards the greatest achievements of mankind as
developed from a " historical humbug," we must
part company, of course ; he and we can have no
common ground of understanding.

It was inevitable that the news of Jesus's Resur-
rection did not possess the same degree of certainty
as, e.g., the news of His crucifixion. The reason
lies in the facts of the case. Death is a fate
which all men experience ; the Resurrection, as
it is related of Jesus, is something which no one
but He has experienced. His Death upon the
cross was suffered openly before all the people ;
He was accused by the Jewish and condemned
by the Roman authorities. But as risen from

JESUS CHRIST 227

the dead, He showed Himself only to His faithful
ones and to these only at separate intervals.
This difference also corresponds to a difference
in the accounts of the Resurrection. The record
of Jesus's death in the four gospels, all composed
a considerable time after His death, is itself
not absolutely identical. The gospels have their
small points of divergence ; even on the question
of the day of His death the synoptic gospels
(Matthew, Mark, and Luke, on account of their
many similarities, are classed as such) do not
agree with the Gospel of John. But these diver-
gences would by no means justify a denial of the
fact of the crucifixion of Jesus. The account of
Jesus's resurrection permits, however, the possi-
bility of such denial, though this, of course, in-
volves great violence to the meaning and contents
of the record, and heavy loss to the saving grace
enjoyed by mankind, as well as to the intelligent
understanding of history.

The oldest account of the resurrection of Jesus
does not come from the gospels, but from the
fifteenth chapter of the first epistle written by
Paul (about the year 57 A.D.) to the Christian
Church at Corinth, whose genuineness is beyond
all question. The information of this letter has

228 THE PERSON OF

this advantage over the gospels, that it goes
farther back ; it is an historical source of primary
importance, because Paul received his news from
real eye-witnesses of the appearances of the Risen
One, who, at the time at which he wrote the
letter, were for the most part living. The gospels,
though composed later than the First Epistle to
the Corinthians, have this advantage over it, that
they give us vivid accounts of the appearances
of the Risen One, whilst Paul gives only an
enumeration, not an account. Yet on the score
of its dependence upon real eye-witnesses of these
appearances, this mere enumeration retains a
value of its own.

The account given by Paul in i Corinthians
xv. 3-8, runs in the main as follows : Christ died
for our sins, was buried, rose again on the third
day, was seen of Peter, then of the twelve, after-
wards by more than 500 brethren at once, of
whom the greater part at the time of the composi-
tion of this letter were still living, afterwards by
James (probably the Lord's brother) — who though
formerly unbelieving took a prominent part in the
early Church, and is probably also the author of
the Epistle of James — , then of all the Apostles,

JESUS CHRIST 229

perhaps a larger number than the twelve, or
rather the eleven, known to us, since Judas had
become a traitor. Finally he was seen by Paul
himself. By this last appearance Paul can only
have meant the appearance of Jesus in light on
the road to Damascus.

From the circumstance that Paul expressly
mentions the burial of Jesus and puts the burial
and the resurrection " on the third day " close to-
gether, we must infer that according to the account
which Paul gathered from the eye-witnesses, Jesus
was seen alive on Easter Sunday and the grave
found empty. When he mentions the appearance
of the Risen Jesus to himself before Damascus,
some years after the death of Jesus, in connection
with the appearances of the Risen One in the
year of His death, it does not follow, as some
conclude, that all the appearances of Jesus were
subjective visions, but vice versa that Paul, who
was convinced that all the reported appearances
of the Risen One were really objective events,
did not look upon even the appearance before
Damascus as merely a subjective vision due to
the will and power of God. It was not upon
the same level as, e.g., the vision of the man from

230 THE PERSON OF

Macedonia who called him (Acts xvi. 9) to Mace-
donia. Nay, he was persuaded that the Risen
and ascended Jesus had personally appeared to
him as formerly He had to the apostles.

Rather different from this report of Paul's are
the accounts which the four Evangelists give of
the Resurrection and His appearances ; nor do
they agree among themselves. I may assume
that these are familiar to the reader, but I must
group them according to their division in the four
gospels if I am to make their mutual discrepancies
clear. As the Gospel of Mark is probably the
oldest, I begin with it.

According to the Gospel of Mark, which in its
original form ceases with the eighth verse of the
sixteenth chapter, the three women, Mary Magda-
lene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome came
with spices to the grave, early in the morning,
found the stone rolled away, and in the empty
grave a youth in white apparel, who said to them,
" Jesus is risen ". They were to tell the disciples
and Peter that Jesus would go before them to
Galilee and that there they would see Him. They
hastened forth and said nothing to any one for they
were afraid.

JESUS CHRIST 231

Verses 9-20, which are wanting in the oldest
manuscript, are probably a later addition. They
relate that when Jesus had risen from the dead
early on Easter Sunday, He appeared first to Mary
Magdalene. She told His disciples, but they did
not believe her. Afterwards He revealed Him-
self in another form to two who were walking
in the country. These told others, but they too
believed them not. Finally as the eleven sat at
table He revealed Himself to them, upbraided them
for their unbelief, ordered them to preach the
Gospel to every creature and to baptise, and pro-
mised the believers miraculous gifts ; then the
Lord, after He had spoken with them, was taken
up to Heaven to sit at the Right Hand of God. Of
the place and time of this last appearance nothing
is said.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary came on Easter
morning to the grave. An earthquake occurred,
the angel of the Lord came down from Heaven,
rolled away the stone from the door of the grave,
and sat upon it. The keepers of the grave fell
down fainting. The angel announced to the
women that Jesus was risen, and that they should

232 THE PERSON OF

tell His disciples that Jesus would go before them
into Galilee, where they would see Him. Now
as the women hastened forth to tell it to His
disciples, Jesus met and greeted them. They
fell down and embraced His feet. Then Jesus
said, " Be not afraid : go tell My brethren that
they go into Galilee, and there shall they see Me.
. . . Then the eleven disciples went away into
Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed
them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped
Him : but some doubted. And Jesus came and
spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto
Me in Heaven and in Earth. Go ye therefore, and
make disciples of all nations, baptising them in
the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things what-
soever I have commanded you : and, lo, I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world,
Amen."

According to Luke, Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
Mary the mother of James, and others with them
came early to the grave on Easter morning with
spices, only to find the stone rolled away and the
grave empty. Thereupon two men in shining
garments stood by them, who told them of the

JESUS CHRIST 233

Resurrection of Jesus and reminded them of what
He had told them. They now left the grave and
related what had occurred to the disciples, but
their words seemed to them as idle tales and they
believed them not. Peter ran to the grave, saw
the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed,
wondering in himself at that which was come to
pass. The latter words are not to be found in all
the manuscripts.

Now follows the very circumstantial account
of the walk of the two disciples to Emmaus, to
whom the Risen One joined Himself When
they returned to Jerusalem, in order to tell this
to the eleven, they were met by these words :
" The Lord is risen indeed and has appeared
unto Simon ". Then Jesus came into their
midst saying, " Peace be unto you ". " But
they were terrified and affrighted and supposed
that they had seen a spirit." Jesus allayed
their fears and invited them to feel His hands
and His feet and " while they yet believed
not for joy and wondered, He said unto them,
Have ye here any meat ? And they gave Him a
piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb. And
He took it and did eat before them. Thereafter

234 THE PERSON OF

He opened their understanding that they might
understand the Scriptures, and said unto them,
Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to
suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day : and
that repentance and remission of sins should be
preached in His name among all nations, beginning
at Jerusalem : . . . but tarry ye in Jerusalem, until
ye be endued with power from on high. Then
He led them out as far as to Bethany; and He
lifted up His hands, and blessed them. And it
came to pass, while He blessed them, He was
parted from them, and carried up into heaven."

The Gospel of John was perhaps written last of
all ; but its report of the resurrection of Jesus con-
tains a peculiar amount of suggestive detail, and
some narratives that are quite wanting in the three
synoptics. The gospel is denied by most scholars
to be the work of the Apostle John. If they are
right, the obvious course is to attribute these more
concrete and novel traits to the pious fancy of tra-
dition. But since so thorough and well-informed
a scholar as Beyschlag maintains, on weighty
grounds, the high probability that the Apostle
John himself really wrote the gospel in his ad-
vanced age, we must consider it possible that

JESUS CHRIST 235

Beyschlag is right In that event, the accounts
given by John naturally assume quite a different
significance. It is an ear and eye witness of the
highest authority, who in part corroborates, in
part completes, and in part corrects what the
synoptists related.

According to John, Mary Magdalene came early
on the morning of Easter Sunday, found the stone
rolled away, and the grave empty ; and then ran
to Peter and John and complained to them :
" They have taken away the Lord from the grave,
and we know not where they have laid Him ".
The two disciples went to the grave, found it
empty, saw only the linen clothes and the napkin
that was about His head, and went away home.
Mary now returned and stood weeping at the sepul-
chre, when she saw two angels within who spoke
to her sympathetically. As she looked back she
saw Jesus standing and at first supposed Him to
be the gardener, but recognised Him when He ad-
dressed her with the word " Mary ! " Then He
said to her " Touch Me not ; for I am not yet
ascended to My Father : but go to My brethren,
and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and
your Father ; and to My God, and your God ".

236 THE PERSON OF

Mary now went and told the disciples. On the
evening of the same Easter Sunday, when the
disciples were gathered together and the doors
were shut for fear of the Jews, Jesus came into
their midst saying, " Peace be unto you," showed
them His hands and feet and side, and said to
them, "As the Father hath sent Me, even so
send I you ". Then He breathed on them and
gave them the Holy Spirit for the remission or
retention of sins. Thomas was not with them,
and he refused to believe what his fellow apostles
related, unless he could lay his finger in the
print of the nails and the side of Jesus. After
eight days the disciples were again gathered
together, and Thomas with them. Then Jesus
came again, the doors being shut and said, " Peace
be unto you," let Thomas lay his hands in the
print of the nails and in His side, and upbraided
him for his unbelief. And Thomas answered and
said, " My Lord and my God ! " In a supplement,
chapter xxi. tells of the appearance of Jesus to seven
disciples, among them Peter and John on the lake
of Genesareth, of the plentiful draught of fishes,
of Peter's re-establishment in his apostleship, and
of the prophecies of Jesus about the future of Peter
and John.

JESUS CHRIST 237

These are in essence the contents of the biblical
record of the Resurrection of Jesus and His differ-
ent appearances. Their differences, together with
the abruptness and variety of the appearances of
Jesus, and their distribution over Jerusalem and
its environs and Galilee, together with the (lif-
erent intervals of time between the events and
their record, are at first sight far from surprising.
Any one would allow that such discrepancies in
the accounts were not inexplicable ; he would be
persuaded that from these different reports some
sequence of events could quite well be inferred, in
which each of the narratives would find its place,
with slight modifications, of course, here and
there. He would think so, if the events related
were analogous to the rest of human experience.
But this is not the case. These stories are a
report of something that stands in contradiction
to the fate of all other men ; they describe the
change of a dead man's body into a new and glori-
fied one, no longer subject to death. This contra-
diction of all experience has elicited attempts to
explain the appearances of Jesus after His death,
without denying the corruption of His body.

For a long time the so-called hypothesis of

238 THE PERSON OF

" vision " was the only attempt of this class. The
recorded appearances of the Risen One were traced
to visions, i.e., to a subjective experience of the
human soul, leaving it an open question whether
the thing seen is only an involuntary product of
the soul that sees, or is occasioned by something
objective in the unseen world. Every one, on
this hypothesis, would have the choice, according
to his mental standpoint, of either the former or
the latter interpretation of the vision. Scientists
who reject a belief in the resurrection of Jesus's
body, have recently begun to emphasise the objec-
tive reality of His appearances to such a degree
that their view goes far beyond the conception of
"vision" in ordinary terminology. This is done
with the view of discarding the Resurrection of
Jesus's body but at the same time of holding fast
by a glorified Heavenly existence, together with
the reality of Jesus's continued existence after His
crucifixion, the reality of His appearances to the
disciples, and the reality of His continuous personal
influence upon the kingdom of God, of which He
is the abiding Head.

The need for this has been expressed with
especial warmth and depth in some lectures by

JESUS CHRIST 2S9

Rev. Rudolf Otto on the Life and Work of Jesus,
according to Historical Criticism (Göttingen, Van-
denhoeck & Rupprecht, first ed., 1902). The
aspects which fall to be considered under the
problem of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ,
are ably and clearly presented by Max Reischle
in the weekly journal Die Christliche Welt (No. 1,
4th Jan., 1900). The same journal contains in
No. 23, 8th June, 1905, a highly readable at-
tempt at a solution in this direction by Gustav
Wepfer : "The Appearances of the Risen Lord
Regarded from the Standpoint of Scientific
Psychological ". According to Wepfer, the Risen
Christ, in purely spiritual form, entered into com-
munication with the spirit of the disciples, in
whose soul, without any co-operation of ether
vibrations or air-waves, without the mediation of
any physical apparatus of sight and hearing, and
without the co-operation of their material nerve
apparatus, the very same sensations of seeing
and hearing arose as were wont to appear under
ordinary circumstances in their souls by the im-
pressions of the material and outward world upon
their senses and nervous system. In consequence
of this spiritual connection of the Risen One with

240 THE PERSON OF

the quickened souls of His disciples, they really
saw with their mental eye the sublime and gracious
form of their Saviour, and really heard the well-
known sound of His voice with their mental ear.
But, as they could not comprehend in a correct
scientific way, the peculiar seat and substance of
these experiences, they could not but have the firm,
immovable conviction that they had really seen
their Lord and Saviour with their own eyes, and
had heard Him speak with their own ears.

This solution, however, like the attempt made
by the hypothesis of "vision," is impossible with-
out some historical tour de force, to which, in the
case of the hypothesis of vision, a psychological
tour de force must be added.

The historical tour de force consists in this, that
one must set aside the empty grave. For all
attempts to give a natural explanation of the
empty grave, whether on the ground that the
disciples secretly put away the body (see Matt,
xxviii. 13) in order afterwards to be able to say
that Jesus was risen, or on the supposition that
the Crucified was only apparently dead and woke
again in the coolness of the grave, from which
He went to His disciples — all such are too

JESUS CHRIST 241

monstrous to deserve serious refutation. In order
to be able to set aside the accounts of the empty
grave as unhistorical, Weizsäcker in his Apostolic
Age, and Professor Arnold Meyer, who enters
into more detail, in his Resurrection of Christ (Tüb-
ingen, Mohr, 1905), make all the disciples — in
contradiction to the gospel narratives — flee to
Galilee after the crucifixion ; hence all the appear-
ances of Jesus take place in Galilee. Thus there
would certainly be no immediate occasion for
going to see the grave and corpse of Jesus. But
though we ignore what is said about the women
and disciples going to the grave, the words of
Paul in 1 Corinthians xv. 4 cannot be ignored,
according to which Jesus rose on the third day,
i.e., after the ancient reckoning, on Easter Sun-
day. This implies that He must have been seen
by the disciples on that day. Now even had
they fled ever so quickly, they could not have
reached Galilee in time for Jesus to have appeared
to them there on Easter Sunday. Besides, the
assertion that the disciples immediately fled after
Jesus was crucified, has no historical, much less
any psychological, basis. In Matthew and Mark

there is the contrary assertion of the message

16

242 THE PERSON OF

given by the angels to the women, that " they
were to go before Him into Galilee". If the
flight of the disciples to Galilee had begun on the
evening of Good Friday the message ought to
have run, " Jesus will follow you into Galilee ".

But, great as is the historical tour de force in the
vision "hypothesis," the psychological tour de force
is just as great. In order to explain the dismay
of the disciples after the Crucifixion of their
Master, with its rapid and sudden change into a
state of mind which caused the Crucified to appear
as the Risen One, one is obliged to have recourse
to a very complicated and well-nigh incredible
historical reconstruction. But when we further
find that not only the gospels, but also Paul (in
i Corinthians xv.), report that Jesus appeared
several times, once indeed to more than 500 per-
sons at once ; when we learn that Jesus spoke
with them, and gave them orders — then objective
appearances of the Risen One are the sole ade-
quate basis for understanding how the Apostles
came to be conscious of having received such com-
mands, or how they carried them out with so
conspicuous and epoch-making a success.

Moreover there is the fact that Christendom

JESUS CHRIST 243

changed its day of rest from Saturday to Sunday.
This innovation, so momentous in the history of
religion, is most simply explained by the further
fact that it was on Easter Sunday that the disciples
saw the Risen One first, and therefore that from
the very outset they made Sunday, as the " Lord's
Day," a " Day of Rest " as well as of assembling
together. As Jews, they still kept the Sabbath, so
they had two days of rest in the week of seven
days. But this could not long continue ; one of the
rest-days had to be given up. After the experience
of the Resurrection of their Lord, they had no
longer any doubt which they would decide upon
— the Sabbath had to give place to the " Lord's
Day " — the last day to the first day of the week.

One fact which we must admit, and for which
we also must try to find some explanation, is that
many earnest and esteemed Christians oppose be-
lief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the
grave. In addition to the above-named scholars
we must reckon, among others, the eminent and
in many respects pioneering theologian, Adolf
Harnack, in this class. He says, in What is
Christianity ? " If the resurrection of Jesus means
nothing else than the resuscitation of a dead body

244 THE PERSON OF

of flesh and blood, we should make short work of
such a tradition ".

There seem to me to be two tendencies which
combine to make the Resurrection of the body of
Jesus to a new and glorified heavenly life, impos-
sible and therefore unhistorical. One is the con-
viction of the inviolability of the laws of Nature ;
the other, the tendency which has been prominent
for about a century, to dwell on the human rather
than on the Divine side of the nature of Jesus.

As regards the latter, in connection with the
more anthropological side of our Christology, it
must be admitted that, for about seventeen cen-
turies after the rise of Christianity, the Divine
side of Jesus was studied to the detriment of the
human in too one-sided a fashion ; there is ample
justification nowadays, therefore, for the increasing
emphasis on, and study of, His humanity. Not
only our historical knowledge, but also our piety,
cannot fail to profit by this. The latter has
already derived unspeakable advantage from this
movement, and will continue to do so. But the
advent of a new tendency, which is perfectly
justifiable in itself, involves a danger of preci-
pitancy. Many writers seem to me to be exposed

JESUS CHRIST 245

to this peril, inasmuch as they now emphasise the
human side of Jesus in a one-sided fashion, rele-
gating the unique and divine element to the back-
ground, if they do not ignore it altogether.

As soon as one places Jesus unreservedly in the
ranks of other men, even if one names Him the
greatest religious genius that has ever appeared,
it is perfectly plain that one must allow Him to
have shared the fate of death and corruption com-
mon to all men. But as soon as one does, as
Christendom has rightly done till now, though oc-
casionally with an exaggerated emphasis on meta-
physical definitions of the Divine Essence of Jesus ;
I mean, as soon as one sees in Jesus some One
unique, One Who alone could inaugurate a new
and higher stage of existence for humanity, One
Who brings reconciliation with God, Redemption
from Sin and Death, Sonship with God, and Eter-
nal Life — then one has no right to deny facts that
are related of Him in a trustworthy manner, be-
cause they do not agree with the life and experience
of other men. For Jesus, although a true Man,
is " Son of God " uniquely, as He is unique in His
humanity, not isolated thereby from the rest of
men, but the Representative of true humanity, as

246 THE PERSON OF

it should be, the Head of a new and regenerate
humanity, the Head of the children of God in the
Kingdom of God which He has Himself founded.

The inviolability of the laws of Nature remains
valid even for those who believe in the Resurrec-
tion of Jesus, not only in the sense that, so long
as the present course of the world lasts, the law
of death and corruption holds good for all other
men, but also in the sense that, even in what
happened to Jesus at His Resurrection, the law of
the conservation of energy and matter has not been
put aside ; what He experienced was a new and
hitherto non-existent revelation of enormous im-
port for the future of mankind and of the universe.
For Jesus, when raised to a glorified existence, ex-
perienced exactly what the whole Creation will ex-
perience when it is changed from its transient and
vain estate, as the Bible calls it, to the state of
glory.

The theological tendency which doubts or de-
nies the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, does appear
at first sight to have gained the upper hand in our
own day ; but it will certainly be replaced by a ten-
dency of thought which returns to the affirmation
of the Easter message in the full sense in which it

JESUS CHRIST 247

has been proclaimed and believed from the begin-
ning. Christendom cannot long endure that im-
poverishment of its religious inheritance, which is
involved in the deposition of Jesus from the unique-
ness of His Divine Sonship. To-day, more than
ever, it must decline such an impoverishment. For
in addition to the old and by no means antiquated
reasons for upholding the physical Resurrection of
Jesus, the development of different views of the
world (a development which is essentially due to
the expansion of our knowledge of the universe
and to modern speculation) has given rise to yet
further reasons based on biblical and especially on
Pauline ideas. The old reasons, which will always
form an essential part of the basis for our Christian
faith, are simply these : that the victory of Jesus
over death is guaranteed, and our conviction of
the Righteousness of God satisfied, only if Jesus
in no way remained a prey to the death which
He suffered innocently for our sakes. The new
reasons are these, that the bodily Resurrection of
Jesus throws a new light on the whole course of
the world. It guarantees for us a future glorifica-
tion of the world in a new existence, in which what
is to-day imperfect, and apparently purposeless,

248 THE PERSON OF

finds its solution, in which the riddle of the uni-
verse is solved, in which the universe finds a
goal. Even the old question why good and evil
exist in the world — a question unsolved at the ad-
vent of Jesus — finds a satisfying answer in Jesus's
physical Resurrection. That death and evil — so
far as one can speak of these in the psychological
qualities of the animal world which formed the
preliminary stage of the human, — were in the
world before the appearance of man, geology has
proved beyond all question. The idea that through
the Fall of the first human pair death and evil
came into the universe, has long been abandoned
by theologians ; their support of it was simply due
to ignorance of the results of Natural Science and
a wrong exegesis of Romans v. 12. In this passage
we read : " By one man sin entered into the world,
and death by sin ". We usually take for granted
that " world " here means the same as universe,
whereas, according to the whole context, " world "
only means humanity. On all these problems the
Resurrection of Jesus and its consequences throw
an illuminating light. We now see that the
whole present course of the universe, with its law
of struggle, evolution, and death— a law to which

JESUS CHRIST 249

everything is subject — forms only a preliminary
stage of some higher and perfect existence in
which death and evil have no place. Paul puts
this (in Romans viii. 20) briefly in words of un-
surpassable wealth : " The creature was made
subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of
Him who subjected the same in hope ". On this
view, the whole universe, as it now exists, is
based on a plan of hope, on something future,
permanent, and perfect. Its present condition
only reveals the preliminary stages of a goal yet
to be attained, the way to which, a way on
which we find ourselves, is one of evolution
through struggle and transiency. Hence we can
understand the existence of death and evil, and
even the possibility and actual reality of wicked-
ness in the world. It is all sown in hope, and
the Resurrection of Jesus assures us that this
hope has a foundation.

How rich and satisfying is the optimism of such
a view of the world, as opposed to the naturalistic
view ! The latter only sees in the course of the
world an eternal revolution, in which individual
men and humanity, with all their achievements

and experiences, appear as a wave in the sea,

16*

250 THE PERSON OF

which rises to vanish for ever. And more. The
Christian view of the world comes into no collision
with that of Natural Science. Science certainly
has to investigate the natural side of all that
happens or has happened in the world, and the
narrative of the Resurrection of Jesus must so far
fall within the range of scientific scrutiny, once it
is related as fact in a trustworthy manner. But
Science has no right to do more than scrutinise
it. For in all the accounts of the Resurrection of
Jesus, the details of the occurrence on its natural
side are wanting ; in fact, this beginning of a new
order of being is veiled in the same obscurity as are
all beginnings of life. And we have shown already
that, on the question of the uniqueness of Jesus,
Science cannot raise any objections, provided that
the unique experiences of this unique personality
are recorded in a trustworthy fashion.

But religion as well as Science has reason to
confess the limitations of its knowledge, and to
abide by these limitations. Certain as the Resur-
rection of Jesus has made us that our hopes con-
cerning our own personality, humanity, and the
whole universe will be fulfilled, the problem
of the time and method of this fulfilment is

JESUS CHRIST 251

enveloped in a scarcely transparent veil, and only
unsubstantial forms would emerge if we sought
to lift it in our own strength. Better for us to
rest content with the hopeful prospect we enjoy !
Better, meantime, to execute the tasks that God
has appointed to us here below, till for us too
the veil is taken away.

Finis

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED