DARWINISM AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 117 



' Paradise Lost " is, that it synclironized, curiously enough., with 

 the first attempt to limit the logical term " species " to definite 

 natural-history usage. This was the work of Milton's youngei" 

 contemporary, John Ray, from whom the theory of the fixity of 

 species may be said to date. Whether Milton influenced Ray, 

 or Ray Milton, or whether the theory was " in the air," it is 

 difficult to say. But in the next century, we find in Linnseus 

 the meeting-point of Milton's a 'priori view of creation and Ray's 

 unscientific doctrine of fixed species. The well-known words of 

 Linnseus in the " Philosophia Botanica," " Species tot sunt, quot 

 diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens, qucB former, 

 secundum generationis inditas leges, produxere plures, at sibi 

 semper similes," * are thus the first formulation of the theory 

 of special creation, which angry evolutionists attack and unwise 

 apologists defend. In Linneeus's own time it came to be gener- 

 ally accepted, though questioned by Buffon, who contended for 

 the modifiableness of species. Popular belief in the Linngean 

 doctrine seems to have been shaken by Cuvier at the beginning 

 of the present century, and destroyed by Darwin's " Origin of 

 Species " ; and yet the dead hand of an exploded scientific theory 

 rests upon theology, and Christians, in all good faith, set to work 

 to defend a view which has neither Biblical, nor patristic, nor 

 mediaeval authority. 



It is difficult a priori to see how the question, except by a 

 confusion, becomes a religious question at all. Writing to a 

 lady who had consulted him as to the bearing of evolution on 

 theology, Mr. Darwin says, " I can not see how the belief that 

 all organic beings, including man, have been genetically derived 

 from some simple being, instead of having been separately 

 created, bears on your difficulties " ; f and at the close of the 

 " Origin of Species " he had written, in the same spirit, " I see 

 no good reason why the views given in this volume -should shock 

 the religious feelings of any one." | 



The Bible, no doubt, in its vivid consciousness of the omni- 

 presence of God, speaks of everything as wrought by him. He 

 makes the grass to grow. He feeds the ravens. He clothes the 

 lilies. He lets his breath go forth, and the beasts of the field are 

 made. Children and the fruit of the womb are his gift. He 

 covers the infant in the mother's womb, and fashions its limbs 

 as they are made in secret. Does any sane man suppose that 

 this conflicts with what we know of the laws of growth and 

 generation, or that it implies an obliterating or an abridgment 



* [There are as many species as there were different forms produced in the beginning 

 by the Infinite Being, and these forms, according to the prescribed laws of reproduction, 

 have brought forth abundantly, but always like themselves.] 



f " Life and Letters," ii, p. 24Y. % P. 421. 



