Evolution in Education [pp. 233-248]

EVOL UTIOV IN ED UCA TIOX.N
scientifically improbable. Religion is a mental and moral necessity of man; and as man is a part of nature, why should not
this want be provided for as well as those arising from the instincts of other animals? It has been well said that to inquire
as to the origin of religion seems as futile as to inquire as to
the origin of hunger and thirst. We cannot imagine any animal to have existed without these appetites and the means of
gratifying them, nor can we imagine a being gifted with consciousness and reason, and yet destitute of religious ideas and
convictions.
If a revelation has been given, the analogy of nature would
lead us to suppose that it would be given gradually and through
human media, and that its language and style of thought would
be largely those of the prophetic media. Thus we should expect
just such an historical development of God's plans and requirements, distilled through human minds, as we find in the Bible.
We should expect, as in the geological history of the earth, the
earlier stages to be imperfect, tho good after their kind, and
prophetic of and preparatory to the later.
But it may be asked, What of such doctrines as those of
miracles, of prayer, of atonement, of future punishment? Are
not these unreasonable and'unscientific? That may depend on
the manner in which we understand them, and on our own conceptions of natural law. Miracles, or "signs" as they are more
properly called, are not necessarily violations of natural law. If
they were, science might be excused for rejecting them. Those
recorded in the Bible are rather correlations and adjustments of
laws, or counteractions of lower laws by those on a higher
plane. Such miracles are really a part of the ordinary course of
nature, and must exist wherever life and volition exist. But as
we know that science itself enables men to work miracles,
absolutely impossible and unintelligible to the ignorant, we may
readily believe that the Almighty can still more profoundly
modify and rearrange his own laws and forces. Viewed in this
way, a miracle is a most natural thing, and to be expected in
any case where events great and momentous in a spiritual sense
are transpiring.
A naturalist should be the last man in the world to object to
the efficacy of prayer, since prayer is itself one of the most
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