First, if we rightly apprehend it, a suggestion of atheism is infused into the premises in a negative form:  Mr. Darwin shows no disposition to resolve the efficiency of physical causes into the efficiency of the First Cause.  Next (on page 48) comes the positive charge that “Mr. Darwin, although himself a theist,” maintains that “the contrivances manifested in the organs of plants and animals . . . are not due to the continued cooperation and control of the divine mind, nor to the original purpose of God in the constitution of the universe.”  As to the negative statement, it might suffice to recall Dr. Hodge’s truthful remark that Darwin “is simply a naturalist,” and that “his work on the origin of species does not purport to be philosophical.”  In physical and physiological treatises, the most religious men rarely think it necessary to postulate the First Cause, nor are they misjudged by the omission.  But surely Mr. Darwin does show the disposition which our author denies him, not only by implication in many instances, but most explicitly where one would naturally look for it, namely—­at the close of the volume in question:  “To my mind, it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator,” etc.  If that does not refer the efficiency of physical causes to the First Cause, what form of words could do so?  The positive charge appears to be equally gratuitous.  In both Dr. Hodge must have overlooked the beginning as well as the end of the volume which he judges so hardly.  Just as mathematicians and physicists, in their systems, are wont to postulate the fundamental and undeniable truths they are concerned with, or what they take for such and require to be taken for granted, so Mr. Darwin postulates, upon the first page of his notable work, and in the words of Whewell and Bishop Butler:  1.  The establishment by divine power of general laws, according to which, rather than by insulated interpositions in each particular case, events are brought about in the material world; and 2.  That by the word ’:natural” is meant “stated, fixed, or settled,” by this same power, “since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so—­i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times—­as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once.[VIII-2] So when Mr. Darwin makes such large and free use of “natural as antithetical to supernatural” causes, we are left in no doubt as to the ultimate source which he refers them to.  Rather let us say there ought to be no doubt, unless there are other grounds for it to rest upon.