Such ground there must be, or seem to be, to justify or excuse a veteran divine and scholar like Dr. Hodge in his deduction of pure atheism from a system produced by a confessed theist, and based, as we have seen, upon thoroughly orthodox fundamental conceptions.  Even if we may not hope to reconcile the difference between the theologian and the naturalist, it may be well to ascertain where their real divergence begins, or ought to begin, and what it amounts to.  Seemingly, it is in their proximate, not in their ultimate, principles, as Dr. Hodge insists when he declares that the whole drift of Darwinism is to prove that everything “may be accounted for by the blind operation of natural causes, without any intention, purpose, or cooperation of God.”  “Why don’t he say,” cries the theologian, “that the complicated organs of plants and animals are the product of the divine intelligence?  If God made them, it makes no difference, so far as the question of design is concerned, how he made them, whether at once or by process of evolution.”  But, as we have seen, Mr. Darwin does say that, and he over and over implies it when he refers the production of species “to secondary causes,” and likens their origination to the origination of individuals; species being series of individuals with greater difference.  It is not for the theologian to object that the power which made individual men and other animals, and all the differences which the races of mankind exhibit, through secondary causes, could not have originated congeries of more or less greatly differing individuals through the same causes.

Clearly, then, the difference between the theologian and the naturalist is not fundamental, and evolution may be as profoundly and as particularly theistic as it is increasingly probable.  The taint of atheism which, in Dr. Hodge’s view, leavens the whole lump, is not inherent in the original grain of Darwinism—­in the principles posited—­but has somehow been introduced in the subsequent treatment.  Possibly, when found, it may be eliminated.  Perhaps there is mutual misapprehension growing out of some ambiguity in the use of terms.  “Without any intention, purpose, or cooperation of God."- These are sweeping and effectual words.  How came they to be applied to natural selection by a divine who professes that God ordained whatsoever cometh to pass?  In this wise:  “The point to be proved is, that it is the distinctive doctrine of Mr. Darwin that species owe their origin—­1.  Not to the original intention of the divine mind; 2.  Not to special acts of creation calling new forms into existence at certain epochs; 3.  Not to the constant and everywhere operative efficiency of God guiding physical causes in the production of intended effects; but 4.  To the gradual accumulation of unintended variations of structure and instinct securing some advantage to their subjects.”  Then Dr. Hodge adduces “Darwin’s own testimony,” to the purport that natural selection denotes the