But the deficiency of the traditional theology as well as the ground of its conflict with exact science lies in this, that instead of interpreting and establishing Faith on a sound basis it has given much more thought to the derivation from it of scientific propositions about the mode of the creation of the world and man. We have then, no longer, a struggle between faith and knowledge, but one between theological and scientific anthropology.

To be sure the objection will be made that the old theological anthropology is derived from the Old Testament if not from the New, and must be unconditionally preferred to every modern system of anthropology because the Old Testament is as much inspired as the New.

Quite the same argument was made in the 16th and 17th centuries by the advocates of the theological cosmology against the theory of Copernicus. What can be urged against it? Right here we might ask the question: what kind of an idea of divine inspiration and revelation is that which would include under them, perforce, a communication on the ways and means used by God in the creation of man? So far as I know, the character of revelation has been ascribed in the Church only to such doctrines and events as stand in some assignable connection with the salvation of man. But how in the world can it be shown that our salvation depends upon any revealed or not revealed theory of the origin and development of organic nature? Granting, however, that the Old Testament account of the creation of man came through inspiration, how much more do we know about the problem of the origin of things? We find this process of origination just as problematic with the Old Testament as without it. It has been truly said that we know nothing at all about the beginning of the world and man. We may then regard the biblical story as revealed or not. Such also must have been the opinion of the apostle Paul who, at all events, had once an opportunity to make a declaration about the history of creation, namely, in the Epistle to the Romans, where he sets forth in so impartial a way the prerogative of the Jews as compared with the Gentiles. There he declares that the Gentiles had the moral law written in their consciences, while the Jews possessed it in palpable shape in the tables of

Moses; the Gentiles had recognized God's creative power from his works he does not continue while the Jews possessed an inspired account of the manner of creation. If Paul had seen in the Bible history of creation what certain Jewish Christian theologians would even to-day see in it, it would have been inexcusable in him to omit that opportunity to extol the advantages of the Jews.

But disregarding the fact that, when we measure the Bible story by the standard of scientific requirements, it gives no disclosure about the origin of man, it presents us, like all the religious cosmogonies of antiquity, with a judgment of faith in rather than with an inspired scientific theory. It answers Faith's question, how the pious Israelite represented to himself the beginning of the world, rather than the scientific question how the different kinds of existing things came into being.

The fact that this faith-knowledge is arrayed in historical form does not change its character. The fact that it is in a certain degree illustrated by the naïve views of nature entertained by antiquity has just as little effect upon it. The value of this story lies not in its historical dress nor in its form as history of nature, if we may use the phrase, it lies in the notion it gives of the relatively high and pure idea of God and his relation to men, formed centuries before Christ by the pious Israelites.

But if we take the story just as it is, it tells us nothing about a condition of perfection surrounding men in the beginning, it finds the image of God like ancient philosophy in nothing else. than reason through which man is to learn and to rule nature. The moral quality which Christianity has taught us to regard as the specifically human attribute appears there, though still materialistic as in all Israelitish religion.

Yet whatever may be the bearing of the Jewish cosmogony, it rests in any case on that untenable view of the universe which regards the earth as the center.

It has already, on this point, been disproved by the Copernican theory. We need not wait for the proof of the doctrine of descent. The biblical history of creation is as valuable as testimony of the ancient Jewish belief,-the belief in the intelligent, holy Creator of the world which we Christians share, as it is valueless when we apply the test to see how far it furnishes

a scientific solution, at all satisfactory, of the problem of the origin of the world and man.

I hold this position, then theology has absolutely nothing to do with deriving cosmological or anthropological theories from religious belief. It should show how and why we come to a belief in the creation of the world, and that man is in the image of God, how and why we can retain the belief in its strength in the face of Darwinism as well as Copernicism. Thereby it will fulfill its task as a science of religion and not of nature.

We have now advanced to a stage in the discussion where our conflict is no longer to be considered as a conflict between obsolete theological and earnest scientific anthropology. If we have reproached the theologians with having derived scientific propositions from religious belief under a misconception of its peculiar nature, we must now reproach their opponents with having derived dogmas from the propositions or hypotheses of exact science under a like misconception of its proper limitations, dogmas, too, which assuredly have a direct bearing on the sphere of religion and are only too often in open antagonism with Christian faith. This has been done by the advocates of evolution. This hypothesis has been used to support and spread a belief in materialism.

To furnish instances I need only mention the names of Strauss and Häckel. We must, therefore, make a clear distinction between the scientific hypothesis, evolution, and dogmatic Darwinism.

Christian faith can with difficulty become satisfied with that hypothesis, but with the dogmatic conclusions drawn from it, it can never be reconciled.

Now then we have no longer a conflict between science and faith, but between faith and faith, namely, between old Christian faith and materialistic faith newly arrayed with the help of the evolution doctrine.

Let us look at this a little closer. Without entering the field of natural science we may as laymen draw a distinction. between the doctrine of the descent of man itself and the doctrine of natural selection. The first only says, conjecturally, that the higher species have developed out of lower forms. It

does not decide whether this development was the result of outside influences only, or whether these outside influences were only the means, under favorable conditions, of setting free latent powers, especially those of a spiritual nature.

The doctrine of natural selection, on the contrary, if I understand it correctly, recognizes in these outside conditions of development: heredity, environment, climate, time, etc., immedi ately the causes and the only causes of the appearance of the higher species as well as of mental life. Now nobody disputes that the development of mental life depends upon physical conditions, but that these physical conditions are the causes of the development of mental life is an hypothesis which can not yet be clearly represented in ideas, much less supported by a single example. The notion that mind has developed out of sense is almost equivalent to saying that mind is merely a function of the physical powers.

of matter.

It has not been possible and probably never will be possible to show how nervous action becomes consciousness, or how a muscular movement changes into an act of the will. Certainly it is a gross self-deception to consider mind as a mere function If we begin in earnest to regard matter as the cause of logical, æsthetic, or moral and religious functions, we begin to regard as matter something which is no longer pure matter, if I may so speak. When we regard it as endowed with spiritual powers we regard it in reality as spirit, and the whole conflict between materialism and idealism turns out to be a mere question of words.

When we accept the doctrine of the descent of man, what more do we know about the essence of matter, of mind, and of the relations which subsist between these two fundamental principles which our thought must not only necessarily separate from each other but also unite together? Viewed in a scientific light this doctrine has given us nothing, absolutely nothing, which has brought us even a single step nearer the solution of that eternal riddle. Therefore the working out of this hypothesis in support of dogmatic materialism is thoroughly arbitrary and unnecessary; and further, we may judge about the grounds of belief in materialism after the rise of evolution in exactly the same way we were justified in judging of them before.

Here again now we cannot insist too strongly on the point, that, when we discuss the contradictions between materialism and Christianity, just as before, we have to do with the contradictions between two views ef the world, two kinds of belief, and not at all with the contradictions of science and religion.

Materialism as a general view of the world does not come under the category of science, but under the category of relig ion. It has then to be measured by the standard which we, generally speaking, are able to apply to religious belief in accordance with its peculiarity. Therefore we may say that correctness and truth are to be attributed to every general view of the world according to its capacity to call forth and guarantee a true moral culture.

In the first place we have to consider its qualifications to give us a general, satisfying, theoretical interpretation of the world which shall be equally just to spiritual and to physical

facts.

Every religious view of the world must base its right to life on its value as a means of culture. The capacity of a faith morally to ennoble men, to reconcile them to their condition in the world, to make them relatively happy in the best sense of the word, and to give them inward satisfaction, will always be the chief proof of its truth, if truth is the proper word. No faith at all, neither materialistic nor Christian, is theoretically capable of proof. But if we look at the practical value of these two as means of culture we can scarcely institute a comparison or raise the question of rivalry between them. What could materialism oppose to Christianity's ideals of life? Where can we find a view of the world which as a means of culture is to be compared with Christianity? We ask the question because very many of our contemporaries have become unconscious of the immense value of the ideas of Christianity as a means of culture and chiefly on account of the unhappy mixture of scholastic theology and Christian faith. Surely, too, we have not only to deal with the moral ideas of Christianity but also with its specifically religious ideas.

The belief that the guidance and government of the world is under the control of a highest Intelligence and a just Will; the religious belief that above us rules a Love aiming at our true