Does not a gradual improvement in the thing created show a corresponding improvement in the creator? The church demonstrated the falsity and folly of Darwin's theories by showing that they contradicted the Mosaic account of creation, and now the theories of Darwin having been fairly established, the church says that the Mosaic account is true, because it is in harmony with Darwin. Now, if it should turn out that Darwin was mistaken, what then?
To me it is somewhat difficult to understand the mental processes of one who really feels that "the gap between man and the inferior animals or their relationship was stated, perhaps, even more emphatically by Bishop Butler than by Darwin."
Butler answered deists, who objected to the cruelties of the Bible, and yet lauded the God of Nature by showing that the God of Nature is as cruel as the God of the Bible. That is to say, he succeeded in showing that both Gods are bad. He had no possible conception of the splendid generalizations of Darwin—the great truths that have revolutionized the thought of the world.
But there was one question asked by Bishop Butler that throws a flame of light upon the probable origin of most, if not all, religions: "Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity as well as individuals?"
If you are convinced that Moses and Darwin are in exact accord, will you be good enough to tell who, in your judgment, were the parents of Adam and Eve? Do you find in Darwin any theory that satisfactorily accounts for the "inspired fact" that a Rib, commencing with Monogonic Propagation—falling into halves by a contraction in the middle—reaching, after many ages of Evolution, the Amphigonie stage, and then, by the Survival of the Fittest, assisted by Natural Selection, moulded and modified by Environment, became at last, the mother of the human race?
Here is a world in which there are countless varieties of life—these varieties in all probability related to each other—all living upon each other—everything devouring something, and in its turn devoured by something else—everywhere claw and beak, hoof and tooth,—everything seeking the life of something else—every drop of water a battle-field, every atom being for some wild beast a jungle—every place a golgotha—and such a world is declared to be the work of the infinitely wise and compassionate.
According to your idea, Jehovah prepared a home for his children—first a garden in which they should be tempted and from which they should be driven; then a world filled with briers and thorns and wild and poisonous beasts—a world in which the air should be filled with the enemies of human life—a world in which disease should be contagious, and in which it was impossible to tell, except by actual experiment, the poisonous from the nutritious. And these children were allowed to live in dens and holes and fight their way against monstrous serpents and crouching beasts—were allowed to live in ignorance and fear—to have false ideas of this good and loving God—ideas so false, that they made of him a fiend—ideas so false, that they sacrificed their wives and babes to appease the imaginary wrath of this monster. And this God gave to different nations different ideas of himself, knowing that in consequence of that these nations would meet upon countless fields of death and drain each other's veins.
Would it not have been better had the world been so that parents would transmit only their virtues—only their perfections, physical and mental,—allowing their diseases and their vices to perish with them?
In my reply to Dr. Field I had asked: Why should God demand a sacrifice from man? Why should the infinite ask anything from the finite? Should the sun beg from the glowworm, and should the momentary spark excite the envy of the source of light?
Upon which you remark, "that if the infinite is to make no demands upon the finite, by parity of reasoning, the great and strong should scarcely make them on the weak and small." Can this be called reasoning? Why should the infinite demand a sacrifice from man? In the first place, the infinite is conditionless—the infinite cannot want—the infinite has. A conditioned being may want; but the gratification of a want involves a change of condition. If God be conditionless, he can have no wants—consequently, no human being can gratify the infinite.