It is true that this exaggeration of the belief in uniformity has produced in turn its own perilous reaction. From refusing to believe whatever can be called exceptional, some have come to believe whatever can be called wonderful.
But, on the whole, the discontinuous or highly various character of experience received for many years too little deliberate attention. The conception of uniformity which is a necessity of scientific description has been taken for the substance of history. We have accepted a postulate of scientific method as if it were a conclusion of scientific demonstration. In the name of a generalisation which, however just on the lines of a particular method, is the prize of a difficult exploit of reflexion, we have discarded the direct impressions of experience; or, perhaps it is more true to say, we have used for the criticism of alleged experiences a doctrine of uniformity which is only valid in the region of abstract science. For every science depends for its advance upon limitation of attention, upon the selection out of the whole content of consciousness of that part or aspect which is measurable by the method of the science. Accordingly there is a science of life which rightly displays the unity underlying all its manifestations. But there is another view of life, equally valid, and practically sometimes more important, which recognises the immediate and lasting effect of crisis, difference, and revolution. Our ardour for the demonstration of uniformity of process and of minute continuous change needs to be balanced by a recognition of the catastrophic element in experience, and also by a recognition of the exceptional significance for us of events which may be perfectly regular from an impersonal point of view.
An exorbitant jealousy of miracle, revelation, and ultimate moral distinctions has been imported from evolutionary science into religious thought. And it has been a damaging influence, because it has taken men's attention from facts, and fixed them upon theories.
With this acknowledgment of important drawbacks, requiring many words for their proper description, I proceed to indicate certain results of Darwin's doctrine which I believe to be in the long run wholly beneficial to Christian thought. These are: