As a theologian, Mr. Henslow doubtless is not to be compared with the
veteran professor at Princeton. On the other hand, he has the advantage of
being a naturalist, and the son of a naturalist, as well as a clergyman:
consequently he feels the full force of an array of facts in nature, and of
the natural inferences from them, which the theological professor, from his
Biblical standpoint, and on his implicit assumption that the Old Testament
must needs teach true science, can hardly be expected to appreciate.
Accordingly, a naturalist would be apt to say of Dr. Hodge's exposition of
"theories of the universe" and kindred topics--and in no captious spirit--
that whether right or wrong on particular points, he is not often right or
wrong in the way of a man of science.
Probably from the lack of familiarity with prevalent ideas and their
history, the theologians are apt to suppose that scientific men of the
present day are taking up theories of evolution in pure wantonness or mere
superfluity of naughtiness; that it would have been quite possible, as well
as more proper, to leave all such matters alone. Quieta non movere is
doubtless a wise rule upon such subjects, so long as it is fairly
applicable. But the time for its application in respect to questions of the
origin and relations of existing species has gone by. To ignore them is to
imitate the foolish bird that seeks security by hiding its head in the
sand. Moreover, the naturalists did not force these questions upon the
world; but the world they study forced them upon the naturalists. How these
questions of derivation came naturally and inevitably to be revived, how
the cumulative probability that the existing are derived from preexisting
forms impressed itself upon the minds of many naturalists and thinkers, Mr.
Henslow has briefly explained in the introduction and illustrated in the
succeeding chapters of the first part of his book. Science, he declares,
has been compelled to take up the hypothesis of the evolution of living
things as better explaining all the phenomena. In his opinion, it has
become "infinitely more probable that all living and extinct beings have
been developed or evolved by natural laws of generation from preexisting
forms, than that they, with all their innumerable races and varieties,
should owe their existences severally to Creative fiats." This doctrine,
which even Dr. Hodge allows may possibly be held in a theistic sense, and
which, as we suppose, is so held or viewed by a great proportion of the
naturalists of our day, Mr. Henslow maintains is fully compatible with
dogmatic as well as natural theology; that it explains moral anomalies, and
accounts for the mixture of good and evil in the world, as well as for the
merely relative perfection of things; and, finally, that "the whole scheme
which God has framed for man's existence, from the first that was created
to all eternity, collapses if the great law of evolution be suppressed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account