ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM 



mony pervading nature as the surest founda- 

 tion of their faith in an intelligent and benefi- 

 cent Ruler of the Universe. We meet with the 

 argument in the familiar writings of Xenophon 

 and Cicero, and it is forcibly and eloquently 

 maintained by Voltaire as well as by Paley, and, 

 with various modifications, by Agassiz as well 

 as by the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises. 

 One and all they challenge us to explain, on 

 any other hypothesis than that of creative de- 

 sign, these manifold harmonies, these exquisite 

 adaptations of means to ends, whereof the world 

 is admitted to be full, and which are especially 

 conspicuous among the phenomena of life. 

 Until the establishment of the Doctrine of Evo- 

 lution, the glove thus thrown, age after age, into 

 the arena of philosophic controversy was never 

 triumphantly taken up. It was Mr. Darwin 

 who first, by his discovery of natural selection, 

 supplied the champions of science with the re- 

 sistless weapon by which to vanquish, in this 

 their chief stronghold, the champions of theo- 

 logy. And this is doubtless foremost among 

 the causes of the intense hostility which all con- 

 sistent theologians feel towards Mr. Darwin. 

 This antagonism has been generated, not so 

 much by the silly sentimentalism which regards 

 the Darwinian theory as derogatory to human 

 dignity ; not so much by the knowledge that 

 the theory is incompatible with that ancient 

 VOL. IV 209 



