Where results seemed inevitable, it dared not claim them as God-given.
In the argument from Design it spoke not of God in the sense of
theology, but of a Contriver, immensely, not infinitely wise and good,
working within a world, the scene, rather than the ever dependent
outcome, of His Wisdom; working in such emergencies and opportunities
as occurred, by forces not altogether within His control, towards an
end beyond Himself. It gave us, instead of the awful reverence due to
the Cause of all substance and form, all love and wisdom, a
dangerously detached appreciation of an ingenuity and benevolence
meritorious in aim and often surprisingly successful in contrivance.
The old teleology was more useful to science than to religion, and
the design-naturalists ought to be gratefully remembered by
Biologists. Their search for evidences led them to an eager study of
adaptations and of minute forms, a study such as we have now an
incentive to in the theory of Natural Selection. One hardly meets with
the same ardour in microscopical research until we come to modern
workers. But the argument from Design was never of great importance to
faith. Still, to rid it of this character was worth all the stress and
anxiety of the gallant old war. If Darwin had done nothing else for
us, we are to-day deeply in his debt for this. The world is not less
venerable to us now, not less eloquent of the causing mind, rather
much more eloquent and sacred. But our wonder is not that "the
underjaw of the swine works under the ground" or in any or all of
those particular adaptations which Paley collected with so much skill,
but that a purpose transcending, though resembling, our own purposes,
is everywhere manifest; that what we live in is a whole, mutually
sustaining, eventful and beautiful, where the "dead" forces feed the
energies of life, and life sustains a stranger existence, able in some
real measure to contemplate the whole, of which, mechanically
considered, it is a minor product and a rare ingredient. Here, again,
the change was altogether positive. It was not the escape of a vessel
in a storm with loss of spars and rigging, not a shortening of sail to
save the masts and make a port of refuge. It was rather the emergence
from narrow channels to an open sea. We had propelled the great ship,
finding purchase here and there for slow and uncertain movement. Now,
in deep water, we spread large canvas to a favouring breeze.
The scattered traces of design might be forgotten or obliterated. But
the broad impression of Order became plainer when seen at due distance
and in sufficient range of effect, and the evidence of love and wisdom
in the universe could be trusted more securely for the loss of the
particular calculation of their machinery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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