Mr. Drummond continues: “To science itself this discovery was startling and as unexpected as it has ever been to theology. Exactly fifty years ago Mr. Darwin wrote in dismay to Mr. Hooker that the old theory of _specific creation_—that God made all species apart, and introduced them into the world one by one—was melting away before his eyes. He unburdened the thought, as he says in his letter, almost as if he were confessing a murder. But _so entirely has the world bowed to the weight of facts before which_ even Darwin trembled, that one of the last books on Darwinism by so religious a mind as that of Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, contains in its opening chapter these words: ‘The whole scientific and literary world, _even the whole educated public, accepts as a matter of common knowledge the origin of the species from the other allied_ species, by the ordinary process of natural birth. _The idea of special creation, or any other exceptional mode of production, is absolutely extinct._’” It would be well if each could read the words of Drummond for himself; but in brief he says: “It is needless at this time of day to point out the surpassing grandeur of the new conception [evolution]. How it has filled the Christian imagination and kindled to enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds from Darwin downward is known to everyone. For that _splendid hypothesis we can not be too grateful to science_; and that theology can only enrich itself which gives it even temporary place in its doctrine of creation.” How strange that God failed to make known this stupendous truth (?) through his Word, and left it for science in the hands of Plato’s descendants to figure out! “What it needed,” says Drummond, “was a credible presentation, in view especially of astronomy, geology, paleontology, and biology. These, as we have said, had made the former theory simply untenable. _And science has supplied theology with a theory which the intellect can accept._” Faith has been laid aside. The human intellect has been exalted. Paganism has cast out Christianity, and our boys and girls now study the nebular hypothesis, explanatory of the creation of the worlds, in their astronomy and geography; they dwell upon the eons of ages consumed in the formation of the geologic strata of the earth; they study the fossils of the ages past, and from them describe the evolution of man from a polyp. [Sidenote: Schools have greatest influence]