It will be seen that I attach great importance to natural theology. But I do not propose to write for the confirmed believers in revelation, on the one hand, who have become convinced by the evidence which supports revelation; or for those, on the other hand, who believe nothing, and who have become confirmed in habits of thinking which unfit them for judging of the weight of evidence on such subjects as the existence of God and the creation of man. I write for that great mass of people of average intelligence, who do not understand accurately what the doctrine of evolution is as expounded by its leading representatives, and who do not know to what it leads. It will be found that in some respects there is a distinction between the school of which Darwin is the representative and the school which follows Spencer. To point out this distinction, and yet to show that both systems result in negatives which put an end to the idea of immortality, and that the weight of evidence is against both of them, is what I propose to do. FOOTNOTES: [2] Galileo's "heresy," that the earth moves round the sun, was condemned by a papal decree in the sixteenth century as "absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture." No Roman Catholic now dreams of disputing what the Florentine astronomer maintained; and the evolutionists are perpetually foretelling that the time will come when to question their doctrine will be admitted to be as ridiculous as was the papal interdict fulminated against Galileo. If their doctrine had nothing to confront it but a similar condemnation, proceeding from some ecclesiastical authority claiming to be "infallible," or, if it could be met only by the assertion that it is "contrary to Holy Scripture," there would be some analogy between the two cases. But there is a vast unlikeness between the two cases. While the hypothesis of animal evolution is plainly enough "contrary to Holy Scripture," no one who has any perception of the weakness of its proofs is obliged to rest his rejection of it on that ground. If, in the sixteenth century, there had been as good scientific and physical grounds on which to refute Galileo as there now are for questioning the doctrine of the evolution of distinct species out of other species, the papal condemnation would have been superfluous even for churchmen. We must not forget the age in which we live, or allow any kind of truth to fail of vindication, from fear of being classed with those who in some former age have blunderingly mistaken the means of vindicating truth. Belief in special creations, whatever the Bible may say, does not now, and in all probability never will, stand on a par with the belief that the sun moves round the earth. [3] Macaulay's "Essays," etc., Riverside edition, vol. ii, 502-504. [4] Grote's "Plato," i, 4. [5] Thales flourished 620-560 B. C. Plato's life extended from 427-347 B. C.