that be matter of natural Theology, I cannot tell as yet. But as for all the former questions; and all that St. Paul means when he talks of the law, and how the works of the flesh bring men under the law, stern and terrible and destructive, though holy and just and good—they are matter of natural Theology; and I believe that here, as elsewhere, Scripture and Science will be ultimately found to coincide.
But here we have to face an objection which you will often hear now from scientific men, and still oftener from non-scientific men; who will say—It matters not to us whether Scripture contradicts or does not contradict a scientific natural Theology; for we hold such a science to be impossible and naught. The old Jews put a God into nature; and therefore of course they could see, as you see, what they had already put there. But we see no God in nature. We do not deny the existence of a God. We merely say that scientific research does not reveal Him to us. We see no marks of design in physical phenomena. What used to be considered as marks of design can be better explained by considering them as the results of evolution according to necessary laws; and you and Scripture make a mere assumption when you ascribe them to the operation of a mind like the human mind.
Now on this point I believe we may answer fearlessly—If you cannot see it, we cannot help you. If the heavens do not declare to you the glory of God, nor the firmament show you His handy-work, then our poor arguments will not show them. “The eye can only see that which it brings with it the power of seeing.” We can only reassert that we see design everywhere; and that the vast majority of the human race in every age and clime has seen it. Analogy from experience, sound induction—as we hold—from the works not only of men but of animals, has made it an all but self-evident truth to us, that wherever there is arrangement, there must be an arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to an end, there must be an adapter; wherever an organization, there must be an organizer. The existence of a designing God is no more demonstrable from nature than the existence of other human beings independent of ourselves; or, indeed, than the existence of our own bodies. But, like the belief in them, the belief in Him has become an article of our common sense. And that this designing mind is, in some respects, similar to the human mind, is proved to us—as Sir John Herschel well puts it—by the mere fact that we can discover and comprehend the processes of nature.
But here again, if we be contradicted, we can only reassert. If the old words, “He that made the eye, shall he not see? he that planted the ear, shall he not hear?” do not at once commend themselves to the intellect of any person, we shall never convince that person by any arguments drawn from the absurdity of conceiving the invention of optics by a blind man, or of music by a deaf one.
So we will assert our own old-fashioned notion boldly: and more; we will say, in spite of ridicule—That if such a God exists, final causes must exist also. That the whole universe must be one chain of final causes. That if there be a Supreme Reason, he must have reason, and that a good reason, for every physical phenomenon.
We will tell the modern scientific man—You are nervously afraid of the mention of final causes. You quote against them Bacon’s saying, that they are barren virgins; that no physical fact was ever discovered or explained by them. You are right: as far as regards yourselves. You have no business with final causes; because final causes are moral causes: and you are physical students only. We, the natural Theologians, have business with them. Your duty is to find out the How of things: ours, to find out the Why. If you rejoin that we shall never find out the Why, unless we first learn something of the How, we shall not deny that. It may be most useful, I had almost said necessary, that the clergy should have some scientific training. It may be most useful—I sometimes dream of a day when it will be considered necessary—that every candidate for Ordination should be required to have passed creditably in at least one branch of physical science, if it be only to teach him the method of sound scientific thought. But our having learnt the How, will not make it needless, much less impossible, for us to study the Why. It will merely make more clear to us the things of which we have to study the Why; and enable us to keep the How and the Why more religiously apart from each other.
But if it be said—After all, there is no Why. The doctrine of evolution, by doing away with the theory of creation, does away with that of final causes—Let us answer boldly—Not in the least. We might accept all that Mr. Darwin, all that Professor Huxley, all that other most able men, have so learnedly and so acutely written on physical science, and yet preserve our natural Theology on exactly the same basis as that on which Butler and Paley left it. That we should have to develop it, I do not deny. That we should have to relinquish it, I do.
Let me press this thought earnestly on you. I know that many wiser and better men than I have fears on this point. I cannot share in them.
All, it seems to me, that the new doctrines of evolution demand is this:—We all agree—for the fact is patent—that our own bodies, and indeed the body of every living creature, are evolved from a seemingly simple germ by natural laws, without visible action of any designing will or mind, into the full organization of a human or other creature. Yet we do not say on that account—God did not create me: I only grew. We hold in this case to our old idea, and say—If there be evolution, there must be an evolver. Now the new physical theories only ask us, it seems to me, to extend this conception to the whole universe; to believe that not individuals merely, but whole varieties and races; the total organized life on this planet; and, it may be, the total organization of the universe, have been evolved just as our bodies are, by natural laws acting through circumstance. This may be true, or may be false. But all its truth can do to the natural Theologian will be to make him believe that the Creator bears the same relation to the whole universe, as that Creator undeniably bears to every individual human body.
I entreat you to weigh these words, which have not been written in haste; and I entreat you also, if you wish to see how little the new theory, that species may have been gradually created by variation, natural selection, and so forth, interferes with the old theory of design, contrivance, and adaptation, nay, with the fullest admission of benevolent final causes—I entreat you, I say, to study Darwin’s “Fertilization of Orchids”—a book which, whether his main theory be true or not, will still remain a most valuable addition to natural Theology.
For suppose that all the species of Orchids, and not only they, but their congeners—the Gingers, the Arrowroots, the Bananas—are all the descendants of one original form, which was most probably nearly allied to the Snowdrop and the Iris. What then? Would that be one whit more wonderful, more unworthy of the wisdom and power of God, than if they were, as most believe, created each and all at once, with their minute and often imaginary shades of difference? What would the natural Theologian have to say, were the first theory true, save that God’s works are even more wonderful that he always believed them to be? As for the theory being impossible: we must leave the discussion of that to physical students. It is not for us clergymen to limit the power of God. “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” asked the prophet of old; and we have a right to ask it as long as time shall last. If it be said that natural selection is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety: that, again, is a question to be settled exclusively by physical students. All we have to say on the matter is—That we always knew that God works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that the whole universe, as far as we could discern it, was one concatenation of the most simple means; that it was wonderful, yea, miraculous, in our eyes, that a child should resemble its parents, that the raindrops should make the grass grow, that the grass should become flesh, and the flesh sustenance for the thinking brain of man. Ought God to seem less or more august in our eyes, when we are told that His means are even more simple than we supposed? We held him to be Almighty and All-wise. Are we to reverence Him less or more, if we hear that His might is greater, His wisdom deeper, than we ever dreamed? We believed that His care was over all His works; that His Providence watched perpetually over the whole universe. We were taught—some of us at least—by Holy Scripture, to believe that the whole history of the universe was made up of special Providences. If, then, that should be true which Mr. Darwin eloquently writes—“It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout
