The same author says: "We philosophers and critical theologians have spoken well when we decreed the abolition of miracles; but our decree remained without effect, because we could not show them to be unnecessary, inasmuch as we were unable to indicate any natural force to take their place. Darwin has provided or indicated this natural force, this process of nature; he has opened the door through which a happier posterity may eject miracles forever." Helmholtz says: "Adaptation in the formation of organisms may arise without the intervention of intelligence by the blind operation of natural law." This author confounds law with cause or agent. "Law is nothing without an agent to operate by it." Law is simply a rule of action. Let us hear Strauss once more: "Design in nature, especially in the department of living organisms, has ever been appealed to by those who desire to prove that the world is not SELF-EVOLVED (capitals mine), but the work of an intelligent Creator."--_Old Faith and New, p. 211._ On page 175 Strauss says of those who ridicule Darwin's evolution hypothesis and yet deny miracles: "How do they account for the origin of man, and, in general, the development of the organic out of the inorganic? Would they assume that the original man, as such, no matter how rough and unformed, but still a man, sprang immediately out of the inorganic, out of the sea or the slime of the Nile? They would hardly venture to say that; then they must know that there is only the choice between miracle, the divine hand of the Creator, and Darwin." According to this statement every man is left to one of three conclusions, viz: 1. That man came up immediately _as man_ from the inorganic, or from the slime of the Nile, or from some other slimy place. Or, 2. That man was evolved from the lowest forms of life, according to Darwinism. Or, 3. That man was created by the divine hand, according to Christian belief. Reader, which will you accept. Will you dethrone the Creator? Choose you this day between the Creator and the slime of the sea with the sun's rays. What does Darwin know about the origin of life and mind? I am informed that he believes in a God, who, by miracle, gave the living unit at the base of his evolutionary series, but it seems to be an admission for the sake merely of avoiding disaster, for he says: "In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms is as _hopeless an inquiry_ as how life itself _first originated_. These are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man."--_Descent of Man, p. 66._ This is an open confession; in it all is given up. I am now reminded of one of the last sayings of Strauss; here it is: "We demand for our universe the same piety which the devout man of old demanded for his God." This brings us to the same standard of piety. Then why the opposition?