Readers of the popular scientific magazines and papers of today are often confronted with the statement of the downfall of evolution; and, though this statement is usually not made in a way that carries conviction, there is a growing feeling among the educated public that behind all this smoke there is some fire. It is the object of this article to make clear the real grounds for this suspicion, and at the same time to give a brief survey of the present state of the theory of organic evolution.

One of the things difficult to explain in the world of thought was the sudden and overmastering impetus given to the theory of development by the publication of the works of Charles Darwin. The main idea of that theory, namely, that the higher orders of life had come into being through evolution from lower types, was by no means new; and there is so much among the plainest features of the world's life to suggest the idea, that one can only wonder why, if the scientific mind was waiting for, and wanting, the theory (as it appears to have been doing), it should not have taken it up long before Darwin's time.

What is absolute certainty? Where is it to be found? Does it exist? Is there any belief of mankind which can be claimed as absolutely certain?

It is difficult to define an absolute in any kind. One can only say that the absolute is that which wants nothing to make it complete. The absolute does not even want a philosopher to tell the world what the absolute is. So long as it wants a philosopher to expound it, to that extent it is not complete, and is therefore not the absolute.

Spinoza saw this, and made it the corner-stone of his thought. He saw that Perfection must be capable of telling its own story. It cannot at one and the same time be perfect and yet in need of a human spokesman to explain it. A dumb absolute which needs you to give it a tongue, an unintelligible absolute which needs you to make it rational, a dead absolute which needs you to make it live and interesting, would be no absolute at all. So Spinoza begins his great treatise with admirable humility by defining God as the being who defines himself; who, just because he is all-perfect, needs no explainer, being fully competent to explain himself. God asks for no champions; wants no apologist; seeks for no witnesses. If he did, he would not be God. But Spinoza went too far.

For the modern theologian there is an all-encompassing bond of perfectness in the New Testament in the doctrine of the Logos, found in the Johannine gospel and epistles. It links together the christology of the Synoptic writings, Mark, Matthew, Luke-Acts, and that of the epistles. It combines the primitive doctrine of Jesus the faithful “Servant” of God, glorified and exalted to God's right hand—a doctrine of “apotheosis,” as Baur called it—with the Pauline doctrine of “incarnation,”—Christ a pre-existent being, agent of creation, in the form and likeness of God, but self-emptied and abased, made for a little while lower than the angels, that for the suffering of death he might be made eternally higher than they, heir and lord of the creation. In the one—the Petrine christology, as we may call it because it is mainly represented in the speeches of Peter in Acts 2–5—the residence in heaven is an episode. God has taken up his faithful Servant for a short interval to his own right hand, delivering him out of the power of death, that, when his people have repented of their wicked rejection of him, he may send him again as the Christ, to restore the kingdom to Israel and reign forever on the throne of David in the renewed and glorified Jerusalem. In the other christology—the Pauline—the residence on earth is the episode. The drama's beginning and ending is in heaven. Viewed thus “under the aspect of the eternal” the brief period of abasement, poverty, and suffering, undertaken for the “reconciliation” of the animate world, is scarcely a moment of time. For our sakes the eternal Son of God “became poor,” he emptied himself and took upon him the form of a slave, and became obedient unto death, yea, even the (slave's) death of the cross; but therefore also “God highly exalted him and gave him the Name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The current conception divides religious from scientific belief, so that it seems almost as if religious belief supplied our emotional needs and scientific belief did not. Put into crude terms, this is the sense in which all maintainers of old creeds, who are not merely obscurantist, oppose the dismemberment of tradition. They even say that it is not the mere sentiment which attaches to an inheritance from the past that makes an old creed seem necessary to an intelligent man. For this intelligent man must have in his life a glamor such as science can never give, and the glamor comes from the religious creed. On this ground the mysticism which has always accompanied and exalted intellectual views of the universe must be sought from our traditional creeds, for it can never arise from science and history.

It is our purpose here to maintain the opposite. We shall endeavor to show how a mysticism may arise from the acceptance of science and history as the only possible intellectual views of the universe. So that what has been the chief argument for the maintenance of inherited creeds will be seen to be false. It does not in fact follow that the highest religious life can only arise from the acceptance of traditional creeds, simply because in the past there has been this connection. We are willing to admit that in the thirteenth century mysticism and deep religious feeling depended upon a belief in the eucharist as the physical body of Christ; but it by no means follows that the intellectual disagreement with such a belief implies a desertion of mysticism. This may seem very obvious; but we mean more. We mean that the highest mysticism does not depend even on the belief in a personal God, for the emotional needs of man are just as completely supplied by science and history as they ever were by any theology.

No one who has studied the history of the last century can fail to be struck by the great changes which have taken place in human thought, affecting the whole outlook of man in his relation to the world both within and without and constituting a revolution in the intellectual life of our times. The most permanent forces in human life have been brought face to face with new facts, new conditions, and new ideas, and nowhere do we find the evidences of this change in outlook greater than in the sphere of religion, where the old problems and the old controversies are passed or passing. One of the great questions of today is, as a recent writer has said, “whether Christianity can come to terms with the awakening self-consciousness of modern civilization, equipped with a vast mass of new scientific knowledge and animated for the first time by ideals which are not borrowed from classical or Hebrew antiquity.” But Christianity itself has already been deeply influenced by some of the changes which have taken place. The great forces of history press steadily upon all the institutions of society and the form or expression of the religious life is profoundly affected by the movements of thought or changes in sentiment which take place in human society.

The Dudleys occupy an honorable place in the history of Harvard University. The first American Dudley was Thomas, second governor of the Massachusetts colony. It was he who signed the original charter of the University in 1642 and the revised charter in 1650. His son Joseph also became governor of the colony, and of him President Josiah Quincy said, “Of all the statesmen who have been instrumental in promoting the interests of Harvard College, Joseph Dudley was most influential in giving its constitution a permanent character.” Joseph's son Paul was the founder of this lectureship. He had a judicial career of forty-nine years, for the last six of which he was chief justice of the supreme judicial court. Believing, as he evidently did, that religion was the primary fountain of justice, he chose to show his interest in his college by providing her with funds so that four subjects of great moment to him should be discussed publicly, one every year. There is small wonder that the Validity of Non-episcopal Ordination, which is the subject set for our consideration tonight, should have interested him. While he was a student in college, this question which had hitherto been regarded as settled in Massachusetts colony, at least, was violently reopened.

The books that have been written on the preparation and delivery of sermons are usually more helpful to ministers of some experience than to the students in divinity schools for whose instruction they were first of all intended. The man who is already a preacher, and who is also open-minded and willing to learn, sifts out from the detail of the numerous divisions and subdivisions of such books much that is suggestive and stimulating; his own experience interprets the precepts and warnings that are given, confirms their wisdom, and brings home their application. To the average student, on the other hand, the elaborate analysis easily becomes confusing; the sermon is made to appear a thing highly technical, if not artificial, and, in spite of any protest to the contrary which the book may contain, an end in itself instead of the means to an end. Learning to preach is like learning to do anything else. The rules for the beginner must be few and simple, and refinement and enrichment of method must come as part of the preacher's general growth, and with the gain in confidence and freedom which should naturally result from the continued practice of his calling. Many students would find it easier to begin to preach, and many preachers would be more effective, if they could understand from the first that the rules which govern the method of the sermon differ in no way from those of any other form of persuasive public speech.