The second method of accounting for contrivances in nature admits that they were foreseen and purposed by God, and that He endowed matter with forces which He foresaw and intended should produce such results. But here his agency stops. He never interferes to guide the operation of physical causes. He does nothing to control the course of nature, or the events of history. On this theory it may be said, (1.) That it is utterly inconsistent with the Scriptures. (2.) It does not meet the religious and moral necessities of our nature. It renders prayer irrational and inoperative. It makes it vain for a man in any emergency to look to God for help. (3.) It is inconsistent with obvious facts. We see around us innumerable evidences of the constant activity of mind. This evidence of mind and of its operations, according to Lord Brougham and Dr. Whewell, is far more clear than that of the existence of matter and of its forces. If one or the other is to be denied, it is the latter rather than the former. Paley indeed says, that if the construction of a watch be an undeniable evidence of design it would be a still more wonderful manifestation of skill, if a watch could be made to produce other watches; and, it may be added, not only other watches, but all kinds of time-pieces in endless variety. So it has been asked, if man can make a telescope, why cannot God make a telescope which produces others like itself? This is simply asking, whether matter can be made to do the work of mind? The idea involves a contradiction. For a telescope to make a telescope, supposes it to select copper and zinc in due proportions and fuse them into brass; to fashion that brass into inter-entering tubes; to collect and combine the requisite materials for the different kinds of glass needed; to melt them, grind, fashion, and polish them; adjust their densities and focal distances, etc., etc. A man who can believe that brass can do all this, might as well believe in God. The most credulous men in the world are unbelievers. The great Napoleon could not believe in Providence; but he believed in his star, and in lucky and unlucky days.
This banishing God from the world is simply intolerable, and, blessed be his name, impossible. An absent God who does nothing is, to us, no God. Christ brings God constantly near to us. He said to his disciples, "Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; which have neither store-house nor barn; and God feedeth them; how much better are ye than the fowls. And which of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? Consider the lilies how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to-day in the field, and to-morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will He clothe you, O ye of little faith." "And seek ye not what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after; and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." It may be said that Christ did not teach science. True, but He taught truth; and science, so called, when it comes in conflict with truth, is what man is when he comes in conflict with God.
The advocates of these extreme opinions protest against being considered irreligious. Herbert Spencer says, that his doctrine of an inscrutable, unintelligent, unknown force, as the cause of all things, is a much more religious doctrine than that of a personal, intelligent, and voluntary Being of infinite power and goodness. Matthew Arnold holds that an unconscious "power which makes for right," is a higher idea of God than the Jehovah of the Bible. Christ says, God is a Spirit. Holbach thought that he made a great advance on that definition, when he said, God is motion.
The third method of accounting for the contrivances manifested in the organs of plants and animals, is that which refers them to the blind operation of natural causes. They are not due to the continued coöperation and control of the divine mind, nor to the original purpose of God in the constitution of the universe. This is the doctrine of the Materialists, and to this doctrine, we are sorry to say, Mr. Darwin, although himself a theist, has given in his adhesion. It is on this account the Materialists almost deify him.
From what has been said, it appears that Darwinism includes three distinct elements. First, evolution; or the assumption that all organic forms, vegetable and animal, have been evolved or developed from one, or a few, primordial living germs; second, that this evolution has been effected by natural selection, or the survival of the fittest; and third, and by far the most important and only distinctive element of his theory, that this natural selection is without design, being conducted by unintelligent physical causes. Neither the first nor the second of these elements constitute Darwinism; nor do the two combined. As to the first, namely, evolution, Mr. Darwin himself, in the historical sketch prefixed to the fifth edition of his "Origin of Species," says, that Lamarck, in 1811 and more fully in 1815, "taught that all species, including man, are descended from other species." He refers to some six or eight other scientists, as teaching the same doctrine. This idea of Evolution was prominently presented and elaborated in the "Vestiges of Creation," first published in 1844. Ulrici, Professor in the University of Halle, Germany, in his work "Gott und die Natur," says that the doctrine of evolution took no hold on the minds of scientific men, but was positively rejected by the most eminent physiologists, among whom he mentions J. Müller, K. Wagner, Bischoff, Hoffmann, and others.[8] The Rev. George Henslow, Lecturer on Botany at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, himself a pronounced evolutionist, says the theories of Lamarck and of the "Vestiges of Creation" have given place to that of Mr. Darwin; "and there are not wanting many symptoms of decay in the acceptance even of his. Not only has he considerably modified his views in later editions of the 'Origin of Species,' distinctly expressing the opinion that he attributed too great influence to natural selection, but even men of science, Owen, Huxley,—and at least in its application to man, Wallace himself,—are either opposed to it in great measure, or else give it but a qualified assent. Thus, it has been the fate of all theories of the development of living things to lapse into oblivion. Evolution itself, however, will stand the same."[9] We find in the "Transactions of the Victoria Institute," a still more decided repudiation of Darwinism on the part of Mr. Henslow. He there says: "I do not believe in Darwin's theory; and have endeavored to refute it by showing its utter impossibility."[10] He defines Evolution by saying, "It supposes all animals and plants that exist now, or have ever existed, to have been produced through laws of generation from preëxisting animals and plants respectively; that affinity amongst organic beings implies, or is due to community of descent; and that the degree of affinity between organisms is in proportion to their nearness of generation, or, at least, to the persistence of common characters, they being the products of originally the same parentage."[11] A man, therefore, may be an evolutionist, without being a Darwinian. It should be mentioned that Mr. Henslow expressly excludes man, both as to body and soul, from the law of evolution.
Nor is the theory of natural selection the vital principle of Mr. Darwin's theory, unless the word natural be taken in a sense antithetical to supernatural. In the historical sketch just referred to, Mr. Darwin not only says that he had been anticipated in teaching the doctrine of Evolution by Lamarck and the author of the "Vestiges of Creation;" but that the theory of natural selection, as the means of accounting for evolution, was not original with him. He tells us that as early as 1813, Dr. W. C. Wells "distinctly recognizes the principle of natural selection;" and that Mr. Patrick Matthew, in 1831, "gives precisely the same view of the origin of species as that propounded by Mr. Wallace and myself." Ideas are like seed: they are often cast forth, and not finding a congenial soil produce no fruit. To Mr. Darwin is undoubtedly due the elaboration and thoroughly scientific defence of the theory of natural selection, and to him is to be referred the deep and widespread interest which it has excited.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Gott und die Natur. Von D. Hermann Ulrici. Zweite Auflage. Leipzig, 1866, p. 394.
[9] The Theory of Evolution of Living Things and the Application of the Principles of Evolution to Religion. By Rev. George Henslow, M. A., F. L. S., F. G. S. London, 1873, pp. 27, 28.
[10] Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain. Vol. iv. London, 1870, p. 278.