WHAT IS DARWINISM? 177 



question, "What is Darwinism ? It is Atheism. 

 This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. 

 Darwin himself and all who adopt his views 

 are atheists; but it means that his theory is 

 atheistic ; that the exclusion of design from 

 nature is, as Dr. Gray says, tantamount to 

 atheism. 



Among the last words of Strauss were these : 

 " We demand for our universe the same piety 

 which the devout man of old demanded for his 

 God." " In the enormous machine of the uni- 

 verse, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its 

 jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash 

 of its ponderous stamps and hammers, in the 

 midst of this whole terrific commotion, man, a 

 helpless and defenceless creature, finds himself 

 placed, not secure for a moment that on an 

 imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and 

 rend him, or a hammer crush him to a powder. 

 This sense of abandonment is at first some- 

 thing awful." 1 



1 Strauss says that as lie has arrived at the conclusion that 

 there is no personal God, and no life after death, it would seem 

 to follow that the question, Have we still a religion ? " must be 

 answered in the negative." But as he makes the essence of 

 religion to consist in a sense of dependence, and as he felt him- 

 self to be helpless in the midst of this whirling universe, he had 

 that much religion left. 



