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Show 276 .!JAR WINIAN A. tended should produce such results as these contrivances in Nature, he is told (pages 44-46) that this banishes God from the world, and is inconsistent with obvious facts. And that because of its implying that " He never inte'tferes to guide the operation of physical causes." We italicize the word, for interference proves to be the keynote of Dr. Hodge's system. Interference with a divinely ordained physical Nature for the accomplishment of natural results! An unorthodox ftiend has just imparted to us, with much misgiving and solicitude lest he should be thought irreverent, his tentative hypothesis, which is, that even the Creator may be conceived to have improved with time and experience ! Never before was this theory so plainly and barely put before us. We were obliged to say that, in principle and by implication, it was not wholly original. But in such matters, which are far too high for us, no one is justly to be held responsible for the conclusions which another may draw from his principles or assumptions. Dr. -Hodge's particular view should be gathered from his own statement of it : "In the external world there is ahvays and everywhere indisputable evidence of the activity of two kinds of force, the one physical, the other mental. The physical belongs to matter, and is due to the properties with which it has been endowed; the other is the everywhere present and ever-acting mind of God. To the latter are to be referred all the manifestations of design in Nature, and the ordering of events in Providence. This doctrine does not ignore the efficiency of second causes; it simply asserts that God overrules and controls them. Thus the Psalmist says: 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My substance was not bid from Thee when I was made in secret, WHAT IS DARWINISM! 277 and curiously wrought (or embroidered) m. tb. e 1o wer parts of the earth .... God makes the O'rass t d h b . o o grow, an or s for the children of men.' He sends rain frost and snow IT con t roI s th e wm. ds and the waves He' deter'm i tb . · e · nes e castmg of the lot, the flight of an arrow, and the falling of a sparrow , (pages 43, 44). Far be it from ~s to object to this mode of conceiving divine causation, although like the two oth h . . . ' er t e1stlc conceptwns referred to, it has its difficulties and perhaps the difficulties of both. But, if we un~ derstand it, it draws an unusually hard and fast line between causation in organic and inorganic Nature seems to look for no manifestation of design in tb~ latter except as "God overrules and controls" second caus~s, and, nnally, refers to this overruling and controllmg (rather than to a normal action through endowment) all embryonic development, the growth of vegetables, and the like. He even adds, without break or distinction, the sending of rain, frost, and snow, the :flight of an arrow, and the falling of a sparrow. Somehow we must have misconceived the bearing of the statement; but so it stands as one of "the three. ways," and the right way, of "accounting for contrivances in Nature;" the other two beinD'-1. Their reference to the blind operation of n:tural causes; and, 2. That they were foreseen and purposed by God,- who endowed matter with forces which he foresaw and intended should produce such results but never ~.n terjeres to guide their operation. ' . In animadverting upon this latter view, Dr. Ilodge brmgs forward an argument against evolution, with the examination of which our remarks must close: |
