Prof. Goldwin Smith is recognized as a man of marked ability, and his observations on any subject that engages his pen are received with great respect. The May number of the North American Review contains an article from him on "The Immortality of the Soul," in the course of which he very plainly indicates his judgment as to the practical effect of higher criticism and the doctrine of evolution. He says:

      It would seem that we have come practically to a point at which, evolution and the higher criticism having between them done the work of demolition, and the work of reconstruction, if it is ever to be done, being still in the future, no small part of [468] educated mankind has renounced, or is gradually renouncing, the hope of a future life and acting on the belief that death ends all.

      It is entirely certain that this state of mind has been reached already by all that part of mankind who accept the teaching of the masters of "higher criticism," for they have all renounced the authority of the only teachers the world has ever known who could assure us of eternal life. It is equally certain that those who have accepted in part the teaching of these masters, while still struggling against the acceptance of their final conclusion, are involved in a logical inconsistency which must keep them trembling between hope and despair with reference to the future. They can not fail to hear at times the ringing cry of the inspired apostle, that if Christ hath not been raised from the dead, they that have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. To renounce the hope of the future life is to live for this life alone; and all who have thus lived have been either stoics or epicureans. Preachers are sometimes rebuked for making too much of the future life and too little of the life that now is; but he who insists the most on the value of the former is most effectually emphasizing the importance of the latter, seeing that only by right living now can the future life be secured. If Goldwin Smith has not misjudged the situation, the man who fights against evolution and the "higher criticism" is fighting for life--for that future life without which this present life is such that it were good for a man if he had never been born.

[SEBC 468-469]