DARWINISM AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 119 



complete set of teeth, together with rudimentary hind-legs, fur- 

 nished with bones, joints, and muscles, of which there is no trace 

 externally. Both teeth and legs disappear before birth. On the 

 theory that the whale is a descendant of a land-animal, which 

 used both legs and teeth, they are intelligible as survivals in a 

 creature to which they are apparently useless. But that God 

 should have created these structures in a new being, which had 

 no organic relation with other created forms of life, seems almost 

 inconceivable. We can neither believe that they were created 

 " for mere sport or variety," nor that they are " Divine mock- 

 eries," nor as an ingenious but anthropomorphic writer in the 

 "Spectator" suggested, that God economically kept to the old 

 plan, though its details had ceased to have either appropriate- 

 ness or use. The difficulties are even stronger in the case of 

 man and the now well-known facts of his embryonic life. How 

 is it possible, in the face of these, to maintain that we have in 

 man a creation independent of the rest of God's creative work ? 

 Of course, if the theory of " special creation " existed either in 

 the Bible or in Christian antiquity, we might bravely try and 

 do battle for it. But it came to us some two centuries ago from 

 the side of science with the imprimatur of a Puritan poet. 

 And, though scientific men are now glad to palm off upon theo- 

 logians their own mistakes, religion is not bound to wear, still 

 less to be proud of, the cast-off clothes of physical science. 



(6) On the other hand, and again apart from the scientific 

 evidence in favor of evolution, as a theory it is infinitely more 

 Christian than the theory of " special creation." For it implies 

 the immanence of God in Nature, and the omnipresence of his 

 creative power. Those who opposed the doctrine of evolution, 

 in defense of " a continued intervention " of God, seem to have 

 failed to notice that a theory of occasional intervention implies 

 as its correlative a theory of ordinary absence. Arid this fitted 

 in well with the deism of the last century. For deism, even 

 when it struggled to be orthodox, constantly spoke of God as 

 we might speak of an absentee landlord, who cares nothing for 

 his property so long as he gets his rent. Yet anything more op- 

 posed to the language of the Bible and the Fathers can hardly 

 be imagined. With St. Athanasius, the immanence of the divine 

 Logos is the explanation of the adaptations and unity of Nature, 

 as the fact that man is logikos is the explanation of the truth 

 that man is made in the image of God. Cataclysmal geology 

 and special creation are the scientific analogue of deism. Order, 

 development, law, are the analogue of the Christian view of God. 



We may sum up thus : For Christians the facts of Nature 

 are the acts of God. Religion relates these facts to God as 

 their author ; science relates them to one another as integral 



