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Show 258 JJAR WINIANA. to prevail, on scientific grounds. It may be well to remember that, "of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion; also that the nebular hypothesis-a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of · physical and astronomical discovery- has been denounced as atheistical even down to our day." It has now outlived anathema. It is undeniable that Mr. Darwin lays himself open to this kind of attack. The propounder of natL1ral selection might be expected to make the n!ost of the principle, and to overwork the law of parsimony in its behalf. And a system in which exquisite adaptation of means to ends, complicated interdependences, and orderly sequences, appear as results instead of being introduced as factors, and in which special design is ignored in the particulars, must needs be obnoxious, unless guarded as we suppose Mr. Darwin might have guarded his ground if he had chosen to do so. Our own opinion, after long consideration, is, that Mr. Darwin has no atheistical intent; and that, as respects the test question of design in Nature, his view may be made clear to the theological mind by likening it to that of the "believer in general but not in particular Providence." There is no need to cull passages in support of this interpretation from his various works while the author-the most candid of men-retains through all the editions of the "Origin of Species,. EVOLUTION ANJJ THEOLOGY. 259 the two mottoes from W11ewell and Bishop Butler. 1 The gist of the matter lies in the answer that should be rendered to the questions-1. Do order and useful-w.orking collocation, pervading a system throughout all Its parts, prove design ~ and, 2. Is such evidence neg~tived or inva~idated by the probability that t4ese particular collocatwns belong to lineal series of such in time, and diversified in the course of Nature -grown up, so to say, step by step~ We do not use the terms "adaptation," "arrano-ernent of means t? e~ds," ~nd .the like, because the~ beg the ques-tiOn m statmg It. · Finally, ought not theologians to consider whether they have not already, in principle, conceded to the geologists and physicists all that they are asked to concede to the evolutionists; whether, indeed, the main natural theological difficulties which attend the doctrine of evolution-serious as they may be-are not virtually contained in the admission that there is ·a system of Nature with fixed laws. This, at least, we may say, that, under a system in which so much is done "by the establishment of general laws," it is . 1 "But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this-we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular .case but by the establishment of general laws."- Whewell's Bridgewate; Treatise. "The only distinct meaning of the word 'natural ' is stated fixed or Bett~ed; since what is natural as much requires and presuppo~es an' in~ lligent agent to rend.er it so-i. e., to effect it continually or at stated times-as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once." -Butler's .Analogy. |
