"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."
Far be it from us to object to this mode of conceiving divine causation,
although, like the two other theistic conceptions referred to, it has its
difficulties, and perhaps the difficulties of both. But, if we understand
it, it draws an unusually hard and fast line between causation in organic
and inorganic Nature, seems to look for no manifestation of design in the
latter except as "God overrules and controls" second causes, and, finally,
refers to this overruling and controlling (rather than to a normal action
through endowment) all embryonic development, the growth of vegetables, and
the like. He even adds, without break or distinction, the sending of rain,
frost, and snow, the flight of an arrow, and the falling of a sparrow.
Somehow we must have misconceived the bearing of the statement; but so it
stands as one of "the three ways," and the right way, of "accounting for
contrivances in Nature; the other two being--1. Their reference to the
blind operation of natural causes; and, 2. That they were foreseen and
purposed by God, who endowed matter with forces which he foresaw and
intended should produce such results, but never interferes to guide their
operation.
In animadverting upon this latter view, Dr. Hodge brings forward an
argument against evolution, with the examination of which our remarks must
close:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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