"Especially in the strain that leads to man can we note the increasing spread of habits of cooperation, of unselfishness, of love. The survival of the 'fit' does not necessarily mean either the survival of the 'fittest' or of the 'fightingest.' It has meant in the past, and I believe it means today and tomorrow, the survival of those who serve others most unselfishly.
"Even in evolution is it true that he who would save his life must lose it. Here if nowhere else, do the facts of evolution lead the man of science to stand shoulder to shoulder with the man of religion.
"Another difficulty arises from our present limitations of knowledge. If man has evolved from other forms of animal life by the continuous process of evolution, it is asked how can there be any difference between him and them? How can we believe that he has an immortal soul?
Man Really Above Animals
"Again, the appeal to facts makes it clear that somehow out of the continuity of progress real differences have emerged. When the cow pauses on the hillside to admire the view, when the dog ceases to bay at the moon in order to construct a system of astronomy, then and not till then will we believe that there are no differences between man and other animals. . . .
"Knowledge and mystery exist side by side mystery does not invalidate the facts. Men of science are working on those very problems. They have not learned--and may never learn how God breathed a living soul into man's body. If they should discover that process, and the method used, God will still be just as great a power.
"'In the image of God' cannot refer to hands or feet, heart, stomach, lungs. That may have been the conception of Moses. It certainly was not the conception of Christ, who said that God is spirit and proclaimed that man must worship him in truth. It is man's soul, his spirit, which is patterned after God the spirit.
Not Scientist's Business
"It is the business of the theologian, not the scientist, to state just when and how man gained a soul. The man of science is keenly interested in the matter, but he should not be blamed if he cannot answer questions here. . . .
"Men of science have as their aim the discovery of facts. . . . After they have discovered truth, and not till then, do they consider what its moral implications may be. Thus far, and presumably always, truth, when found, is also found to be right, in the moral sense of the word.
"Men of religion seek righteousness; finding it they also find truth. The further along the two avenues of investigation the scientist and the theologian go, the closer together they discover themselves to be.
"Already many of them are marching shoulder to shoulder in their endeavor to combine a trained and reasoning mind with a faithful and loving heart. In every human individual and thus to develop more perfectly in mankind the image of God. Neither the right kind of mind nor the right kind of heart will suffice without the other. Both are needed, if civilization is to be saved.
Evolution is Necessary
"As Henry Ward Beecher said, forty years ago, 'If to reject God's revelation of the Book is infidelity, what is it to reject God's revelation of Himself in the structure of the whole globe?' With that learned preacher men of science agree when he stated that 'the theory of evolution is the working theory of every department of physical science all over the world.'
Withdraw this theory and every department of physical research would fall back into heaps of hopelessly dislocated facts, with no more order or reason or philosophical coherence than exists in a basket of marbles, or in the juxtaposition of the multitudinous sands of the seashore.
"We should go back into chaos if we took out of the laboratories, out of the dissecting rooms, out of the field of investigation, this great doctrines of evolution.
"Chaos would inevitably destroy the whole moral fabric of society as well as impede the physical progress of humankind.