Moreover, it is not certain that Mr. Darwin would very much better his case, Dr. Hodge being judge, if he did propound some theory of the nexus of divine causation and natural laws, or even if he explicitly adopted the one or the other of the views which he is charged with rejecting.  Either way he might meet a procrustean fate; and, although a saving amount of theism might remain, he would not be sound or comfortable.  For, if he predicates “the constant and everywhere operative efficiency of God,” he may “lapse into the same doctrine” that the Duke of Argyll and Sir John Herschel “seem inclined to,” the latter of whom is blamed for thinking “it but reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or will existing somewhere,” and the former for regarding “it unphilosophical ’to think or speak as if the forces of Nature were either independent of or even separate from the Creator’s power’ “:  while if he falls back upon an “original intention of the divine mind,” endowing matter with forces which he foresaw and intended should produce such results as these contrivances in Nature, he is told that this banishes God from the world, and is inconsistent with obvious facts.  And that because of its implying that “He never interferes to guide the operation of physical causes.  We italicize the word, for interference proves to be the keynote of Dr. Hodge’s system.  Interference with a divinely ordained physical Nature for the accomplishment of natural results!  An unorthodox friend has just imparted to us, with much misgiving and solicitude lest he should be thought irreverent, his tentative hypothesis, which is, that even the Creator may be conceived to have improved with time and experience!  Never before was this theory so plainly and barely put before us.  We were obliged to say that, in principle and by implication, it was not wholly original.

But in such matters, which are far too high for us, no one is justly to be held responsible for the conclusions which another may draw from his principles or assumptions.  Dr. Hodge’s particular view should be gathered from his own statement of it: 

“In the external world there is always and everywhere indisputable evidence of the activity of two kinds of force, the one physical, the other mental.  The physical belongs to matter, and is due to the properties with which it has been endowed; the other is the everywhere present and ever-acting mind of God.  To the latter are to be referred all the manifestations of design in Nature, and the ordering of events in Providence.  This doctrine does not ignore the efficiency of second causes; it simply asserts that God overrules and controls them.  Thus the Psalmist says:  ’I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought (or embroidered) in the lower parts of the earth. . . .  God makes the grass to grow, and herbs for the children of men.’- He sends rain, frost, and snow.  He controls the winds and the waves.  He determines the casting of the lot, the flight of an arrow, and the falling of a sparrow.”