037. THIS EVOLUTION IS ETHICAL

THIS EVOLUTION IS ETHICAL

I now come to a fourth characteristic of our modern theology,—its recognition that evolution is predominantly ethical. By this I mean that the world is not simply a lost world given over to the evil one, but that moral forces are at work in it, and the immanent Christ is progressively transforming it. Even prehistoric and palaeontological life presents dim foreshadowings of the moral truths that emerge in the life of man and that reach their full manifestation in the drama of redemption. As Doctor Harris, of Andover, has so nobly shown, the struggle for existence is not simply a selfish and internecine warfare,—it is each creature’s standing for its rights. Self-preservation in the animal creation is an adumbration of that principle in man which leads him to maintain his integrity and to vindicate his freedom. Without the perception of rights there would be no perception of duties, and Christ prepares for the ethical career of humanity by giving even to the beast below him the instinct to defend itself and to guard its own. As there is an evolutionary preparation for righteousness, so there is an evolutionary preparation for love. Henry Drummond’s best teaching was this. In the impulse of reproduction and in the care for offspring there is already an incipient altruism. The tigress that suckles her young and the eagle that starves herself to give her eaglets food show a self-sacrifice which in its higher and human developments becomes truly ethical. And why should we stop with the animal creation? Is there not a generosity which belongs to many ungodly men? Is there not a conjugal and paternal and filial affection which cannot be credited to fallen human nature, but which must have a divine origin? Let us not attribute these things to man, but rather to the Christ of God, whose original grace is counteracting the effects of original sin, and who is thus preparing the way for the publication and reception of his finished redemption.

Mr. Kidd has brought out most vividly the fact that there is a social evolution which works upward in spite of the downward direction of the individual will. I recognize in this social evolution the operation of the immanent and omnipresent Christ, whose method is the method of law and of growth, and whose movements have their material and natural as well as their supernatural and spiritual aspect. It is not true that this world is merely a City of Destruction, as John Bunyan and the theology of fifty years ago painted it,—a City of Destruction from which Christ has departed and from which we are only to flee. No, the Lord is here, and we may enjoy his presence along our Christian pilgrimage without waiting, as the pilgrim did, until we reach the shining streets of the New Jerusalem. Even now Christ is leavening society with his Spirit, and we are to better the world instead of leaving it. The governments and institutions of our time are slowly but surely becoming moral, not because of any atheistic law of progress or because of any inherent tendency of things, but because the immanent Christ impresses his own ethical character upon the whole evolutionary process.