492 Darwinism and Religious Thought 
resistances, in short in the general wonder of life and the world. 
And this is exactly what the Divine Power must be for religious 
faith. 
The point I wish once more to make is that the necessary 
readjustment of teleology, so as to make it depend upon the con- 
templation of the whole instead of a part, is advantageous quite as 
much to theology as to science. For the older view failed in courage. 
Here again our theism was not sufficiently theistic. 
Where results seemed inevitable, it dared not claim them as 
God-given. In the argument from Design it spoke not of God in 
the sense of theology, but of a Contriver, immensely, not infinitely 
wise and good, working within a world, the scene, rather than the 
ever dependent outcome, of His Wisdom; working in such emergencies 
and opportunities as occurred, by forces not altogether within His 
control, towards an end beyond Himself. It gave us, instead of the 
awful reverence due to the Cause of all substance and form, all love 
and wisdom, a dangerously detached appreciation of an ingenuity and 
benevolence meritorious in aim and often surprisingly successful in 
contrivance. 
The old teleology was more useful to science than to religion, 
and the design-naturalists ought to be gratefully remembered by 
Biologists. Their search for evidences led them to an eager study 
of adaptations and of minute forms, a study such as we have now an 
incentive to in the theory of Natural Selection. One hardly meets with 
the same ardour in microscopical research until we come to modern 
workers. But the argument from Design was never of great import- 
ance to faith. Still, to rid it of this character was worth all the stress 
and anxiety of the gallant old war. If Darwin had done nothing else 
for us, we are to-day deeply in his debt for this. The world is not 
less venerable to us now, not less eloquent of the causing mind, 
rather much more eloquent and sacred. But our wonder is not that 
“the underjaw of the swine works under the ground” or in any or 
all of those particular adaptations which Paley collected with so 
much skill, but that a purpose transcending, though resembling, 
our own purposes, is everywhere manifest; that what we live 
in is a whole, mutually sustaining, eventful and beautiful, where 
the “dead ” forces feed the energies of life, and life sustains a stranger 
existence, able in some real measure to contemplate the whole, of 
which, mechanically considered, it is a minor product and a rare 
ingredient. Here, again, the change was altogether positive. It was 
not the escape of a vessel in a storm with loss of spars and rigging, 
not a shortening of sail to save the masts and make a port of refuge. 
It was rather the emergence from narrow channels to an open sea. 
We had propelled the great ship, finding purchase here and there for 
