before only other things were present, like a _deus ex machina_, certainly such an opinion is only a childlike conception, which becomes childish as soon as we scientifically reason about the process. It cannot be doubtful that religious minds which are not accustomed to scientific reasoning, have such a conception; whether theologians also favor it, we do not know, although it is possible. Certainly those scientists who intend to attack the faith in a living Creator and Lord of the world, take it as the wholly natural, even as the only possible, conception of a Creator and his creation; and of course it is to them a great and cheap pleasure to become victorious knights in such a puppet-show view of the conception of creation. But the source whence Christians derive their {258} religious knowledge tells them precisely the contrary. The Holy Scripture, it is true, sees in the entire universe a work of God. But where it describes the creation of the single elements of the world, it describes at the same time their creation as the product of natural causes, brought about by natural conditions. The reader may see, for instance, the words: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, etc. And _the earth brought forth_ grass and herb," etc. "And God said, Let _the earth bring forth the living creature_." Even the creation of man is thus related: "And the Lord God _formed_ man of the dust of the ground." Certainly the forming presupposes a matter out of which man is formed. And, on the other hand, where the Bible speaks of single beings in the kingdoms long before created and perfected, of the individual man who is originated by generation and birth, of single plants and animals--in general, of single processes and phenomena in the world long before perfected, of wind and waves, of rain and flames, which altogether have their natural causes of origin--it speaks of them all precisely in the same way as when describing their first creation as works of God. The expressions "create, make, form, cause to appear," are applied to the single individuals of the kingdoms long before created, precisely in the same way as they are to the first origin of the first individuals of those kingdoms. Thus, by the full freedom which religious interest gives to scientific investigation, we are well prepared to treat with entire impartiality the question as to the position of each of the Darwinian theories in reference to theism. {259} Sec. 2. _The Descent Theory and Theism._