17 



accept the carpenter-theory of creation as the most worthy 

 one/' Those against whom he feels so indignant might, 

 perhapS;, charge him witli irreligion if he accepted that theory. 

 But certainly it is not for rejecting it that they do so. It is 

 for rejecting creation itself. It is for rejecting the doctrine 

 that there is a conscious, intelligent Creator of the universe, 

 or any God, unless that name may be given to the Persistence 

 of Force which he seems to identify with the Unknowable 

 {First FrincipJes, chap. vi.). 



But why should Mr. Spencer feel so indignant at being 

 charged with irreligion ? Does he wish to be considered 

 religious ? As a worshipper of the persistence of force, perhaps 

 he does. But he cannot expect that Christians will accept 

 that for religion. Or perhaps he only objects to the ground 

 on which the charge is brought. If so, however, I think it has 

 been sufficiently made to appear that he has entirely mistaken 

 that ground. The ground is that he rejects God as a Creator, 

 not as a carpenter. 



Dr. Tyndall, in his well-known Belfast Address, supplies us 

 with a similar, yet somewhat different, view of this '' carpenter- 

 theory." Speaking (in p. 36) of the different forms of life, 

 rising gradually fi'om the simplest to the most complex, he 

 says : "In the presence of such facts it was not possible to 

 avoid the question — Have these forms, showing, though in 

 broken stages and with many irregularities, this unmistakable 

 general advance, been subjected to no continuous law of growth 

 or variation ? Had our education been purely scientific, or 

 had it been sufficiently detached from influences which, 

 however ennobling in another domain, have always proved 

 hindrances and delusions when introduced as factors into 

 the domain of physics, the scientific mind never could have 

 swerved from the search for a law of growth, or allowed itself 

 to accept the anthropomorphism which regarded each suc- 

 cessive stratum as a kind of mechanic's bench for the manufac- 

 ture of new species out of all relation to the old.'' 



By those influences which have always proved hindrances 

 and delusions when introduced into the domain of physics. Dr. 

 Tyndall evidently means the Mosaic account of the Creation, 

 which, according at least to the ordinary interpretation, 

 assigns a distinct act of creation to each of the successive 

 forms of life. And this he calls anthropomorijh'isin, which is as 

 unfair and false a term to apply to it as is the term " carpenter- 

 theory." For what is anthropomorphism ? It is taking our 

 idea of the Deity from what we see in man. It is, to use 

 another expression of Dr. Tyndall's, looking upon God as 

 " a manlike artificer." But what is there that is manlike in 

 VOL. xviii. c 



