and personalities. The strength of all the churches, outside of the Roman Catholic, is being sapped by the infidelity of the clergy to Christ's teachings and their blindness to the real progress of affairs. Instead of preaching Christ crucified, they are generally giving bad lectures on science. Perhaps the time is nearer than they think for, when they will appear (as Burke says in reference to changes in human affairs) to resist the decrees of Providence itself rather than the mere designs of men. They will then not seem resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate. They are already losing hold of the best educated and fairest people. In consequence, there is a greater estrangement between men of science and the Protestant Churches than there need to be. Any such estrangement must be injurious to the conditions of social life in the country.
Again, a grave question comes up here for the consideration of the moralist, and more or less interested in morals we all most certainly are. We have shown elsewhere[1] that our sympathy is extending beyond the narrow bonds of nationalities, races and creeds. We are entering into wider moral relations than every before in the history of our species. Does not a fixed belief in such a statement as that in Genesis interrupt this moral progress by imposing itself as an obstacle between ourselves and those alien to it? It would seem impossible but that it should do so, and certainly a belief in it prevents perfect understanding among ourselves as a race or nation. It cannot be objected to this that all should believe in Genesis; because that is clearly impossible, and the tendency is seen to be in the other direction and that it should take its place among the mental fancies that we can no longer entertain as serious.
Thinking in this way, I have made the present criticism on the account of creation in Genesis, because I hope it may lead to
- ↑ An International Scientific Service, Poc. Am Ass. Adv.-Sci. 1877.
