Darwin, or by Mr. Herbert Spencer and
Professor Huxley? How can those who accept evolution with any
thoroughness accept such doctrines as the Incarnation or the
Redemption with any but a quasi-allegorical and poetical
interpretation? Can we conceivably accept these doctrines in the
literal sense in which the Church advances them? And can the
leaders of the Church be blind to the resistlessness of the current
that has set against those literal interpretations which she seems
to hug more and more closely the more religious life is awakened at
all? The clergyman is wanted as supplementing the doctor and the
lawyer in all civilised communities; these three keep watch on one
another, and prevent one another from becoming too powerful. I, who
distrust the doctrinaire in science even more than the doctrinaire
in religion, should view with dismay the abolition of the Church of
England, as knowing that a blatant bastard science would instantly
step into her shoes; but if some such deplorable consummation is to
be avoided in England, it can only be through more evident leaning
on the part of our clergy to such an interpretation of the Sacred
History as the presence of a black and white Madonna almost side by
side at Oropa appears to suggest.
I fear that in these last paragraphs I may have trenched on
dangerous ground, but it is not possible to go to such places as
Oropa without asking oneself what they mean and involve.
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