Our own opinion, after long consideration, is, that Mr. Darwin has no atheistical intent; and that, as respects the test question of design in Nature, his view may be made clear to the theological mind by likening it to that of the “believer in general but not in particular Providence.”  There is no need to cull passages in support of this interpretation from his various works while the author—­the most candid of men—­retains through all the editions of the “Origin of Species” the two mottoes from Whewell and Bishop Butler.[VII-2]

The gist of the matter lies in the answer that should be rendered to the questions—­1.  Do order and useful-working collocation, pervading a system throughout all its parts, prove design? and, 2.  Is such evidence negatived or invalidated by the probability that these particular collocations belong to lineal series of such in time, and diversified in the course of Nature—­grown up, so to say, step by step?  We do not use the terms “adaptation, “arrangement of means to ends,” and the like, because they beg the question in stating it.

Finally, ought not theologians to consider whether they have not already, in principle, conceded to the geologists and physicists all that they are asked to concede to the evolutionists; whether, indeed, the main natural theological difficulties which attend the doctrine of evolution—­serious as they may be—­are not virtually contained in the admission that there is a system of Nature with fixed laws.  This, at least, we may say, that, under a system in which so much is done “by the establishment of general laws,” it is legitimate for any one to prove, if he can, that any particular thing in the natural world is so done; and it is the proper business of scientific men to push their enquiries in this direction.

It is beside the point for Dr. Hodge to object that, “from the nature of the case, what concerns the origin of things cannot be known except by a supernatural revelation;” that “science has to do with the facts and laws of Nature:  here the question concerns the origin of such facts.”  For the very object of the evolutionists, and of Mr. Darwin in particular, is to remove these subjects from the category of origination, and to bring them under the domain of science by treating them as questions about how things go on, not how they began.  Whether the succession of living forms on the earth is or is not among the facts and laws of Nature, is the very matter in controversy.

Moreover, adds Dr. Hodge, it has been conceded that in this matter “proofs, in the proper sense of the word, are not to be had; we are beyond the region of demonstration, and have only probabilities to consider.”  Wherefore “Christians have a right to protest against the arraying of probabilities against the clear teachings of Scripture.”  The word is italicized, as if to intimate that probabilities have no claims which a theologian is bound to respect.  As to arraying them against Scripture, there is nothing