“SPEAKING SERPENT IS MERELY FOLK-LORE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 207, 21 November 1927, Page 16

“SPEAKING SERPENT IS MERELY FOLK-LORE”

CANON ARCHDALL’S VIEW RELIGION AND EVOLUTION The Christian doctrine of the creation of the world is not radio* ally affected by scientific teaching. Modern science has enriched our knowledge of the method of crea* tive process. In a sermon on “Evolution and Religion,’’ at St. Mary’s Cathedral last evening, Canon H. K. Archdall, headmaster of King's College, made this statement. He said that the main religious value of Genesis lay in the belief in the activity of one Eternal God as Creator, and not in details of primitive folk-lore. Natural science was not necessarily allied with the philosophy of materialism. Science was not concerned to argue that the world made itself or that natural selection was more than a testing principle. Neither did science •do away with the aspect of. sin and failure. It rather heightened perception of the danger of remaining stationary or developing in a purely one-sided manner. To keep alive the divine impulse which urged man on to the higher life, was the main function and problem of religion. The virtue of Christ’s atonement had to be manifested to the world. The story of the serpent which spoke was merely primitive folklore, but it contained the imperishable truth of the fall of man from the perfect life by his yielding to the lower impulses and failing to always follow the spirit of God within him.