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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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