730 An Exegesis of Darwinism. [December } 
7. “ However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow 
Professor Asa Gray in his belief ‘ that variation has been 
led' along certain beneficial lines,’ like a stream ‘ along 
definite and useful lines of irrigation.’ . . . On the other 
hand an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains every- 
thing and foresees everything” (ii., 428). “The under- 
standing revolts at such a conclusion ” as that the origin of 
species is “ the result of blind chance,” “ whether or not we 
are able to believe that every slight variation” was fore- 
ordained. (“ Descent of Man,” p. 613.) That an omniscient 
Creator foresees everything is a truism ; we may also allow 
that an omnipotent Creator ordains everything. A third 
attribute — all-wise, and a fourth — all-beneficent, are, how- 
ever, essential to a God proper. Negledt to exercise power 
solves the problem as easily as Mr. John Stuart Mill's 
tentative “ hypothesis that the Creator is a being of limited 
power,” displaying “ benevolent design limited by obstacles,” 
as he himself worded it in a recently-published letter to Mr. 
R. Pharazyn. It behoves me to marshal the evidences of 
Mr. Darwin’s theism, and his indictment of the wisdom and 
beneficence of God. 
Three quotations face the title-page of the “ Origin of 
Species.” The first is from a “ Bridgewater Treatise ” ; the 
second from the “ Analogy of Revealed Religion ” ; the 
third is a recommendation to obtain proficience in. science 
and divinity. If Mr. Darwin entertained the views to 
which he gave such conspicuity, he thought that divine 
power is exerted in the establishment of general laws ; that 
an intelligent agent effects natural* results continually or at 
stated times ; that a man cannot be too well studied in the 
literal book of God’s word. Professor Asa Gray inferred 
that “ the most candid of men ” adopted the Whewell and 
Butler quotations as “postulate mottoes,” and the Rev. 
Joseph Cook regards the concord of “ the foremost naturalist 
of our times and the greatest modern Christian apologist ” 
as “ a faCt in which much solace for timid Christians, and 
much taming anodyne for audacious small philosophers, lie 
capsulate.” “ This renowned passage has become in a new 
degree famous by being adopted through numberless editions 
as the postulate motto on the title-page of Darwin’s ‘ Origin 
of Species.’ It stands there as a headlight.” This is quite 
natural inference if we believe the motto was adopted by one 
“ whose greatest praise is that he was, before and above all 
things, an honest man (the italics are not mine, but a 
Westminster Reviewer's) ; by one “ possessed of a certain 
intense and almost passionate honesty by which all his 
