Modern Ideas of Evolution. By Sir William Dawson. (Religious Tract
Society.)—We may briefly commend to our readers this contribution, made by a writer of unquestionable scientific attain- ments, to the perennial controversy touching " Revelation and Science." When the author deals with subjects that come within his special domain of geology, as in his chapter on "The Appari- tion of Series in Geological Times," his argument is specially valuable. He also does excellent service in pointing out the vast assumptions which anti-theistic writers make in the elaborating of their theories. We need a vigorous thinker who knows his own mind. Theologians are often in far too great a hurry to concede conclusions which really never have been established by argument that will stand examination. "If man is merely an accidental improved descendant of apes, his intuitions and decisions as to things unseen must be valueless and unfounded." But if God took an ape and made it into man, it comes to much the same thing as if he made man at once, and without intermediate states, "out of the dust of the ground."
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