Evolution is really the same as history, if we take it in its objective sense. Subjectively, history meant originally inquiry, or a desire to know; it then came to mean knowledge, obtained by inquiry, and lastly, in a purely objective sense, the objects of such knowledge.
Gifford Lectures, I.
We may discover in all the errors of mythology, and in what we call the false or pagan religions of this world, a progress towards truth, a yearning after something more than finite, a growing recognition of the Infinite, throwing off some of its veils before our eyes, and from century to century revealing itself to us more and more in its own purity and holiness. And thus the two concepts, that of evolution and that of revelation, which seem at first so different, become one in the end. If there is a purpose running through the ages, if nature is not blind, if there are agents, recognised at last as the agents of one Will, behind the whole phenomenal world, then the evolution of man's belief in that Supreme Will is itself the truest revelation of that Supreme Will, and must remain the adamantine foundation on which all religion rests, whether we call it natural or supernatural.
Gifford Lectures, II.
The same changes in the idea of God, which we see in the different books of the Bible, take place in the different chapters of our own life. The child cannot but represent God to himself as a venerable man, walking about, warning and reproving the creatures He has made. The child has no higher conception as yet which it could apply to God; if it heard of a higher one it could not grasp it. But as the child grows and gathers in higher conceptions, the lower must give way to the higher. As long as the evidence of the senses is the only evidence which a child knows, he demands a visible God. When he learns that the human senses are different modes of apprehension, that according to their very nature they can never apprehend except what is limited, then the mind involuntarily surrenders the visible God, it believes in God as a Spirit. And so the growth of each man, and the growth of the whole human race, goes on, and will go on; and I cannot see how, if the world goes on as it has hitherto, it can be otherwise but that much of the language of the New Testament also will have to be surrendered. Changes have lately taken place with the word person. Many things which were formerly comprehended under personality have been discovered to be mere accessories, and above the more material conception of personality, of individuality, or of the I, a higher one is rising, that of the Self. The I, the personality, is made up of many things which are purely temporal—which are dear to us on earth, but which will pass away, while the Self will abide for ever. Need we wonder, therefore, that just those who wish to transfer only their highest to the Godhead begin to shrink from speaking of a personal God? or insist on defining the word 'personal' so that it should exclude all that is incompatible with a perfect, unlimited, unchanging Being? What led to such expressions as 'God is Love' but a feeling of reverence, which shrank from speaking of God as loving as we love? This process will go on as long as the thoughts and words of mankind grow and change. Let us learn only from the Bible that those who spoke of God as walking about in Paradise spoke as children, did the best they could, gave all they had, and who shall say that their two mites were in the sight of God less precious than all our creeds and philosophies? They too will change, they too will be looked upon by future generations as the language of children. But He to whom our thoughts and prayers are addressed will interpret all languages and dialects. Before Him the wisdom of the man will not sound much wiser than the trustful ignorance of the child.
MS.
