EVOLUTION— ITS MEANING
progressive discoveries of truth have occasioned is not, however, strictly speaking, a “warfare of religion and science.” It is the inevitable struggle between tradition and knowledge, between conventional beliefs and new views demanded by new evidence. This conflict exists, not alone in church and state, but in the mind of every growing and forward-looking man.
The infinite expanse of the “unfathomed universe,” its development through countless periods of time, the boundless range of its changes and the rational order that pervades it, all seem to demand an infinite intelligence behind its manifestations. ‘That intelligence we cannot define, but of this we feel sure—it centers in no mere tribal god, nor one busy, man-fashion, with schemes and plans. Nor can it be one obsessed by human passions or jealousies. To thoughtful minds it becomes increasingly evident that the majestic mechanism of the universe and the perfect fitting of life to the earth on which it rests are no chance products of “fortuitous clashing of atoms.” We know no cosmic results brought about by accident, happy or unhappy. It has been said that the attributes of humanity are merely traits of “complex carbon compounds.” Even if true, this statement makes the facts no simpler, but far more complicated, by throwing on chemical reactions the brunt of the problems of life. So far as we can see, there is no “chaos” in the universe, nor was there ever any.
In the title of this symposium the word “creation” must be taken in its broadest sense as the aggregation of the intelligence and the energies which enter into the development of the Universe. Is not “‘creation by evolution” a far more exalted conception than any creation by fiat imagined of old? And does it not reveal a Godhead infinitely worthy of obedience and adoration?
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