17.4 WHAT IS DARWINISM? 



part as to the result, or any intervention or 

 guidance, then He is virtually consigned, so far 

 as we are concerned, to non-existence. It has 

 already been said that the most extreme of 

 Mr. Darwin's admirers adopt and laud his 

 theory, for the special reason that it banishes 

 God from the world ; that it enables them to 

 account for design without referring it to the 

 purpose or agency of God. This is done 

 expressly by Biichner, Haeckel, Vogt, and 

 Strauss. The opponents of Darwinism direct 

 their objections principally against this ele- 

 ment of the doctrine. This, as was stated by 

 Rev. Dr. Peabody, was the main ground of the 

 earnest opposition of Agassiz to the theory. 

 America's great botanist. Dr. Asa Gray, avows 

 himself an evolutionist ; but he is not a Dar- 

 winian. Of that point we have the clearest 

 possible proof. Mr. Darwin, after explicitly 

 denying that the variations which have re- 

 sulted in " the formation of the most perfectly 

 adapted animals in the world, man included, 

 were intentionally and specially guided," adds : 

 " However much we may wish it, we can 

 hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief 

 *that variation has been led along certain 

 beneficial lines ' like a stream ' along definite 



