But what grieves us most is

public service of our Church. the injury done to the very cause for which he has confessedly sacrificed his private interests and his public career. We fear that he has inflicted a wound upon the cause of Scriptural holiness which it will take years to heal. There is an inevitable swing to the pendulum of public feeling, and the agitation of his extreme views with the necessary criticism of them, tends to weary men's minds with the very words in which God has clothed some of the most precious truths of Revelation. For this our brother has himself to blame, not those whose sad duty it is to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.

Greenville, Va.

R. A. LAPSLEY.

VI. THE RECOIL OF EVOLUTION'S ASSAULT UPON TELEOLOGY—A REVIEW OF THE "ARGUMENT TO DESIGN."

I should perhaps preface this paper upon the Recoil of Evolution's assault on Final Causes, by the statement that in its preparation I have been little concerned with the bearing of Evolution upon Christian Dogmatics.1

That there is substantial unanimity of opinion among scientists concerning the great law of development will hardly be called into question to-day; that the triumph of the doctrine of Biogenesis has been so far a vindication of the position of Supernatural Religion, and that in spite of the substantial unanimity of opinion concerning the general factors of the problem, there is a wide and widening divergence of scientific opinion in regard to those phases of Evolution that had seemed to involve the integrity of the Scripture records, cannot, I think, be successfully controverted.

For the sake of brevity, and to emphasize the strength of the teleological position, 1 have assumed as proven many things which as yet are merely working hypotheses, and to which I should otherwise enter a most emphatic dissent.

The great central problem around which the world of modern thought is revolving is the existence of God. It is not a problem born of ecclesiasticism, nor indeed primarily the problem of Christianity, but the great problem

1It should be noted in explanation of the style of certain passages, that the article was prepared for a Club of Gentlemen, and was one of a series of three papers, the other two being upon "Evolution" and "The Physical Basis of Life." This article was the second of the series and designed as an ad hominem argument in reply to the paper on "Evolution" by a pronounced "Evolutionist." That the writer cannot be so classed doubtless need not be stated.

of all philosophy. The age has been, indeed, even in the nomenclature of the most advanced science, pre-eminently a religious age; there have been gods many and lords many. We have been treated by turns to a "Religion of Humanity," the "Religion of Cosmism" and the "Religion of the Unknowable." Such terms, however, are meaningless, when we recognize the fact that they have at one blow stripped the conception of God of the one element that makes it possible that we can have towards him any of those sentiments that are inseparably associated with the idea of religion-the attribute of personality. And however ardent a devotee one may be of these new religions, with the "virtual negation of a personal God, the universe," as one confesses, "must have lost its loveliness,” and the soul be left to "face, godless and alone, the gray, awful waste of waters, whose horizon is eternity, with no star in the infinite night for a pole, and no hope of a haven at any time."1 This is just the pitiable condition to which, it is boldly affirmed, we have been brought, and however pitiful, it must be accepted. To this Teleology enters its protest, and upon purely philosophical grounds, affirms an intelligent, personal God, as the explanation of the phenomena of the universe.

The argument has found its exponents from the earliest history of philosophy. It is not merely the Psalmist of Israel that sings of "heavens that declare glory of God, and a firmament that sheweth his handiwork," but the evidences of order in nature led Pythagoras and Anaxagoras to believe in a Supreme Intelligence as an explanation of that order. Aristotle declared that the "heavens and the earth hang on final causes," Socrates elaborates the article at length in the "Memorabilia," and Plato not merely develops it in the "Timaeus," but his ideal of order and harmony is based upon the conception of God, as the norm of all ideals.

1The Great Discourse, p. II.

Cicero unfolds the argument with rare force and beauty in the "De Natura Deorum," and the literature of the Fathers and Schoolmen is filled with it; while Paley popularized it by his illustration of the watch and the savage, as it had never been before.

During the last half of the century, however, the argument has been subjected to a constant fire of adverse criticism.

I shall endeavor to show that much of this criticism either obscures the real question at issue, or is directed not at the argument, but the manner in which it has frequently been stated. I shall then endeavor to state briefly the argument itself, as illustrated in organic and inorganic nature, considering those criticisms that are directed at the principle involved, and shall lastly sketch briefly the recoil of Evolution's assault, in the elucidation and strengthening of the teleological position.

(1) Of that criticism that obscures the real question at issue we have a striking example in Kant, who remarks, concerning the argument, that "it causes our belief in a divine author of the universe to rise to an irresistible conviction" ("Critique," p. 383), and criticises it on the ground. that it at most "demonstrates the existence of an architect, but not of a creator of the world." Others affirm, that "Nature red in tooth and claw with rapine shrieks against" this creed; while Comte adds that the "elements of the cosmic system are not disposed in the most advantageous manner," and modestly insinuates that he could have designed a far "happier arrangement."

It is doubtless sufficient to reply to both these criticisms that the teleological system does not profess to be independent either of the cosmological, the ontological or the purely theological proofs, that it professes to prove neither the creation of the world-matter nor specifically the benevolence of God.

When Mr. Spencer affirms that the cause of the uni

verse cannot be apprehended as intelligent, because the finite man cannot comprehend the infinite; he ignores the fact that to give genuine assent to any proposition, it is the predicate and not the subject that must be apprehended per se1 and in the proposition the "Cause of the universe is an intelligent cause," which is the affirmation of Teleology, it is not claimed that this cause can be known in itself, but only as it manifests itself, namely qua intelligent.

(2) Passing now to those criticisms due to the manner in which the argument has been stated, it is affirmed that Teleology is based solely upon analogy, and an analogy that will not hold, for in works of human art the architect works from without, while in nature the forces all work from within. While the argument has often been stated as though it were merely an analogy, it is more the inference to an intelligent Cause, for the evidence of order and adaptation in nature is as immediate and valid as the inference to the mind of the human artist from the character of his work. I can no more see or touch or directly cognize the mind of my neighbor than I can the mind of God.2 I argue my neighbor's intelligence, not merely because he is a man, but because I see evidence of purposeful action, of subordination of the phenomena to a future result, and by as direct and cogent an intellectual process do we pass from the evidence of order and adaptation of means to end in nature to the affirmation of Mind as the explanation of that order and adaptation.

A review of the history of the argument shows that up to recent times, its exposition has largely been concerned with an accumulation of proof of the existence in nature of "order, definite proportions and means fit to produce certain effects," and to Hume and Kant is due the credit of

'This doctrine of assent has never been more satisfactorily stated than by Cardinal Newman, "Grammar of Assent," page 14, but with a totally different application.

2Flint's Theism, page 158.