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Mr. Darwin's Masterpiece. 
legal d miracles as factors contributing towards some 
denouement, or as parts of some plan calculated to gratify 
Deity direCtly, or indirectly by elevating his favourite 
cieatuie. Thus, though (as Cardinal Newman remarks) a 
soit of atheistic tendency is liable to result from the im- 
piessions which a visit to a menagerie gives of the immense 
variety of animal forms, colours, &c., — for Nature seems 
u t0 ° stl 'ange to be the work of God, according to . . . our 
(( contracted notions of His attributes,” — the “ natural pro- 
u pcnsities and passions ” of animals are such “ mysterious 
phenomena”; their strangeness of “countenance”; the 
principle of deformity, “ whether hideousness or mere home- 
‘ li^ess,” and the principle of the ludicrous, evidence an 
Author (according to the Cardinal), but no “ Principle or 
Agent conelated to our religious ideas,” — yet certain or- 
ganic phenomena, as the song of birds, the colours of sea- 
anemones, the utility of cattle, are conceivably lines in a 
hymn of praise.. Again, fulfilment of prophecies, miracles 
confirming inspired records, the endowment of each ego 
with an element of personality surviving a Judgment Day, 
are not, to theists, a priori improbabilities. Albeit the most 
ardent antagonist of anthropomorphism will fail to discern 
a performance becoming to Deity in the vivification of germs 
01 jelly cast adrift on the world, and the differentiation of 
whose progeny, being “ due to secondary causes, like those 
detei mining the birth and death of the individual,” betrayed 
what, were we criticising “ mechanical inventions,” we 
should consider “ the blunders of numerous workmen.” 
Some teach that Omnipotence rested after six days of 
creative labour; Mr. Darwin’s Creator retired before the 
Tree of Knowledge blossomed. 
Mr. Darwin’s theistic philosophy is beyond my power of 
sober, characterisation. Dr. Mivart remarks that Mr. 
Darwin, “ of course, has no difficulty in finding in [a result] 
“ what he had previously put in ” the factors ; but this 
logical feat (and it is irrelevant to the matter in hand 
whether or no Mr. Darwin performed it) is eclipsed by that 
of finding something in the result not present in the fadtors. 
By a Calvinistic chemistry a God is manufactured from 
blunders and sufferings, as in ordinary chemistry a salt is 
manufactured from an acid and a base. But we can no 
more exonerate God from the responsibilities of these, and 
credit Him with whatever of benefit happens to arise there- 
from, than we can remove the Calvinist difficulty by 
supposing that He who ordained the end (salvation) like- 
wise ordained the means (prayer— therefore the eleCt are 
