Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876Flint, Robert
Religion
Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876
Flint, Robert
Theism
The following writers treat at considerable length of the evidences of
design to be traced in the constitution of the mind: Sir Matthew Hale
in his 'Primitive Origination of Mankind;' Barrow in the seventh of
his 'Sermons on the Creed;' Bentley in the second sermon of his 'Boyle
Lecture;' Crombie in the second volume of his 'Natural Theology;' Lord
Brougham in his 'Discourse on Natural Theology,' sect. iii., pp. 52-80;
Turton's 'Natural Theology Considered,' pp. 65-160; Chalmers's 'Natural
Theology,' Book III.; Buchanan's 'Faith in God,' pp. 213-231; Tulloch's
'Theism,' pp. 182-247; and Ulrici's 'Gott und Mensch.'
The phenomena of animal instinct are of themselves an inexhaustible
source of instruction as to the Divine wisdom and goodness. "The
spinning machinery which is provided in the body of a spider is not
more accurately adjusted to the viscid secretion which is provided
for it, than the instinct of the spider is adjusted both to the
construction of its web and also to the selection of likely places
for the capture of its prey. Those birds and insects whose young
are hatched by the heat of fermentation, have an intuitive impulse
to select the proper materials, and to gather them for the purpose.
All creatures, guided sometimes apparently by senses of which we
know nothing, are under like impulses to provide effectually for the
nourishing of their young; and it is most curious and instructive
to observe that the extent of provision which is involved in the
process, and in the securing of the result, seems very often to be
greater as we descend in the scale of nature, and in proportion as the
parents are dissociated from the actual feeding or personal care of
their offspring. The mammalia have nothing to provide except food for
themselves, and have at first, and for a long time, no duty to perform
beyond the discharge of a purely physical function. Birds have more to
do--in the building of nests, in the choice of sites for these, and
after incubation in the choice of food adapted to the period of growth.
Insects, much lower in the scale of organisation, and subject to the
wonderful processes of metamorphosis, have to provide very often for a
distant future, and for successive stages of development not only in
the young but in the _nidus_ which surrounds them. Bees, if we are to
believe the evidence of observers, have an intuitive guidance in the
selection of food which has the power of producing organic changes in
the bodies of the young, even to the determination and development of
sex, so that, by the administration of it, under what may be called
artificial conditions, certain selected individuals can be made the
mothers and queens of future hives. These are but a few examples of
facts of which the whole animal world is full, presenting, as it does,
one vast series of adjustments between bodily organs and corresponding
instincts. But this adjustment would be useless unless it were part of
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