Westminster Sermons | Page 7

to me, to extend this conception to the whole universe; to believe
that not individuals merely, but whole varieties and races; the total
organized life on this planet; and, it may be, the total organization of
the universe, have been evolved just as our bodies are, by natural laws
acting through circumstance. This may be true, or may be false. But all
its truth can do to the natural Theologian will be to make him believe

that the Creator bears the same relation to the whole universe, as that
Creator undeniably bears to every individual human body.
I entreat you to weigh these words, which have not been written in
haste; and I entreat you also, if you wish to see how little the new
theory, that species may have been gradually created by variation,
natural selection, and so forth, interferes with the old theory of design,
contrivance, and adaptation, nay, with the fullest admission of
benevolent final causes--I entreat you, I say, to study Darwin's
"Fertilization of Orchids"--a book which, whether his main theory be
true or not, will still remain a most valuable addition to natural
Theology.
For suppose that all the species of Orchids, and not only they, but their
congeners--the Gingers, the Arrowroots, the Bananas--are all the
descendants of one original form, which was most probably nearly
allied to the Snowdrop and the Iris. What then? Would that be one whit
more wonderful, more unworthy of the wisdom and power of God, than
if they were, as most believe, created each and all at once, with their
minute and often imaginary shades of difference? What would the
natural Theologian have to say, were the first theory true, save that
God's works are even more wonderful that he always believed them to
be? As for the theory being impossible: we must leave the discussion of
that to physical students. It is not for us clergymen to limit the power of
God. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" asked the prophet of old; and
we have a right to ask it as long as time shall last. If it be said that
natural selection is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety:
that, again, is a question to be settled exclusively by physical students.
All we have to say on the matter is--That we always knew that God
works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that the whole
universe, as far as we could discern it, was one concatenation of the
most simple means; that it was wonderful, yea, miraculous, in our eyes,
that a child should resemble its parents, that the raindrops should make
the grass grow, that the grass should become flesh, and the flesh
sustenance for the thinking brain of man. Ought God to seem less or
more august in our eyes, when we are told that His means are even
more simple than we supposed? We held him to be Almighty and

All-wise. Are we to reverence Him less or more, if we hear that His
might is greater, His wisdom deeper, than we ever dreamed? We
believed that His care was over all His works; that His Providence
watched perpetually over the whole universe. We were taught--some of
us at least--by Holy Scripture, to believe that the whole history of the
universe was made up of special Providences. If, then, that should be
true which Mr Darwin eloquently writes--"It may be metaphorically
said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout
the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is
bad, preserving and adding up that which is good, silently and
incessantly working whenever and wherever opportunity offers at the
improvement of every organic being,"--if that, I say, were proven to be
true: ought God's care and God's providence to seem less or more
magnificent in our eyes? Of old it was said by Him without whom
nothing is made, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Shall we
quarrel with Science, if she should show how those words are true?
What, in one word, should we have to say but this?--We knew of old
that God was so wise that He could make all things: but, behold, He is
so much wiser than even that, that He can make all things make
themselves.
But it may be said--These notions are contrary to Scripture. I must beg
very humbly, but very firmly, to demur to that opinion. Scripture says
that God created. But it nowhere defines that term. The means, the How,
of Creation is nowhere specified. Scripture, again, says that organized
beings were produced, each according to their kind. But it nowhere
defines that term. What a kind includes; whether it includes or not the
capacity of varying--which is just the question in point--is nowhere
specified. And