492 Darwinism and Religious Thought 



resistances, in short in the general wonder of life and the world. 

 And this is exactly what the Divine Power must be for religious 

 faith. 



The point I wish once more to make is that the necessary 

 readjustment of teleology, so as to make it depend upon the con- 

 templation of the whole instead of a part, is advantageous quite as 

 much to theology as to science. For the older view failed in courage. 

 Here again our theism was not sufficiently theistic. 



Where results seemed inevitable, it dared not claim them as 

 God-given. In the argument from Design it spoke not of God in 

 the sense of theology, but of a Contriver, immensely, not infinitely 

 wise and good, working within a world, the scene, rather than the 

 ever dependent outcome, of His Wisdom ; working in such emergencies 

 and opportunities as occurred, by forces not altogether within His 

 control, towards an end beyond Himself. It gave us, instead of the 

 awful reverence due to the Cause of all substance and form, all love 

 and wisdom, a dangerously detached appreciation of an ingenuity and 

 benevolence meritorious in aim and often surprisingly successful in 

 contrivance. 



The old teleology was more useful to science than to religion, 

 and the design-naturalists ought to be gratefully remembered by 

 Biologists. Their search for evidences led them to an eager study 

 of adaptations and of minute forms, a study such as we have now an 

 incentive to in the theory of Natural Selection. One hardly meets with 

 the same ardour in microscopical research until we come to modern 

 workers. But the argument from Design was never of great import- 

 ance to faith. Still, to rid it of this character was worth all the stress 

 and anxiety of the gallant old war. If Darwin had done nothing else 

 for us, we are to-day deeply in his debt for this. The world is not 

 less venerable to us now, not less eloquent of the causing mind, 

 rather much more eloquent and sacred. But our wonder is not that 

 "the underjaw of the swine works under the ground" or in any or 

 all of those particular adaptations which Paley collected with so 

 much skill, but that a purpose transcending, though resembling, 

 our own purposes, is everywhere manifest ; that what we live 

 in is a whole, mutually sustaining, eventful and beautiful, where 

 the " dead " forces feed the energies of life, and life sustains a stranger 

 existence, able in some real measure to contemplate the whole, of 

 which, mechanically considered, it is a minor product and a rare 

 ingredient. Here, again, the change was altogether positive. It was 

 not the escape of a vessel in a storm with loss of spars and rigging, 

 not a shortening of sail to save the masts and make a port of refuge. 

 It was rather the emergence from narrow channels to an open sea. 

 We had propelled the great ship, finding purchase here and there for 



