DARWINISM AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 113 



ories — the one the theory of Darwin, the other the theory of 

 " special creation/' and they are mutually destructive. If the 

 theory of " special creation " is true, Darwinism is false ; if Dar- 

 winism is true, "special creation" is false. And this issue is 

 plainly accepted by both parties. Thus Mr. Darwin says, " I 

 have at least done good service in overthrowing the dogma of 

 separate creations " ; and Haeckel, in the preface to his " Evolu- 

 tion of Man," boasts that " when, in 1873, the grave closed over 

 Louis Agassiz, the last great upholder of the constancy of species 

 and of miraculous creation, the dogma of the constancy of species 

 came to an end, and the contrary assumption — the assertion that 

 all the various species descended from common ancestral forms 

 — now no longer encounters serious difficulty." Darwin was 

 fully aware of the opposition his theory would have to encount- 

 er. And he feared the men of science as much as the theo- 

 logians. " Authors," he says, " of the highest eminence seem to 

 be fully satisfied that each species has been independently cre- 

 ated." When he first hinted at the theory to Joseph Hooker in 

 1843, he says, " I am almost convinced that species are not (it is 

 like confessing a murder) immutable," * and his utmost hope is 

 that he may be able " to show, even to sound naturalists, that 

 there are two sides to the question of the immutability of spe- 

 cies,"! and that "allied species are co-descendants from com- 

 mon stocks." X Whether true or not scientifically, this does not 

 sound like a dangerous heresy, and yet the outcry raised from 

 the side of religion was as great as that raised by contemporary 

 science. Even now religious people are surprised to be told that 

 it is a purely scientific question, to be decided solely on scientific 

 evidence, and to be dealt with effectively only by scientific men. 

 It is not the question whether species were created by God or 

 came into existence independently of him, or (as Huckleberry 

 Finn puts it) " whether they were made or whether they just 

 happened." For science repudiates chance — except as a name 

 for unexplained causation — as earnestly as religion does. It is a 

 question between two views as to secondary creation, or, more 

 strictly, between a theory and the denial of the possibility of a 

 theory as to the method of this creation. The question is this : 

 Were species directly created at the firsts or by intermediate 

 laws, as individuals are ? * Were they independently created, or 

 descended from other species ? || " To say that species were cre- 

 ated so and so," says Mr. Darwin, " is no scientific explanation, 

 only a reverent way of saying it is so and so." ^ " Special cre- 

 ation" is here on the agnostic side, while evolution at least 

 attempts to bring God's action in the past in line with his action 



* " Life and Letters," i, p. 384. f Ibid., i, p. 389. % Ibid., i, p. 393. 



# Ibid., i, p. 394. j Ibid., i, p. 437. ^ Ibid., i, p. 437. 



VOL. XXXIII. — 8 



