328 Evolution as Related to Religious Thought. 



fide teaching that fleas are made black in order that, con- 

 trasting with the whiteness of our linen, we may catch them 

 the more easily. It is that he has also shown how much 

 there is of animal structure which is not useful to the ani- 

 mal. Certain rudimentary organs are the most obvious 

 illustration. Such are the teeth of whales that never cut 

 the gums ; of certain birds also ; the wings of various in- 

 sects that are never opened or used ; the caudal vertebrae 

 in man, the appendix vermiformis in the intestines, a trap 

 for vagrant substances which, once there, proceed to organ- 

 ize an attack of peritonitis on the adjacent tissues. The 

 special creationist, the Paleyologian (if I may call him so) 

 confronts these facts with a theory of ideal types. The 

 Deity is represented as adhering to a general plan, though 

 the adherence is not always useful and is sometimes in the 

 way. A Deity proceeding in this way has been aptly com- 

 pared to a conservative coach-maker who, for the look of the 

 thing, sticks a sham pistol-box upon his coaches when the 

 reality is no longer needed. And then, too, it might be 

 asked, " Would not a God ' so anxious for the type ' have 

 brought it out in the majority of cases rather than in a small 

 minority ? " 



But there are those, and they are very earnest and intel- 

 ligent, for whom supernaturalism and anthropomorphism 

 have no longer any charms, to whom Darwinian Evolution 

 presents the sinister aspect of a universe that is born of 

 chance. What if the variation at this or that moment had 

 been quite otherwise, and yet such that, seized upon by 

 natural selection, it would have attained to paramount im- 

 portance. Then, instead of this cosmos that we have, there 

 might have been a very different cosmos ; instead of this 

 maw-kind, a very different kind of leading race, — some 

 mute, inglorious Jumbo, high advanced and conscious top 

 of all. There are those who answer that the variations have 

 been determined, that the development has been controlled, 

 by overruling mind, to certain ends. But this answer begs 

 the question, and brings back the extra-mundane God, the 

 watch-maker of Paley. Yet if there is no answer, the relig- 

 ious outcome of the evolution doctrine is very poor indeed. 

 Better, a thousand times better, for the religious heart, a 

 mechanic God, a God of interference, special providence and 

 miracle, than a universe devoid of purpose, an aimless drift 

 and swirl of things. Grant that the argument from design, 



