world, man included, were
intentionally and specially guided."[9] This, then, is the grand
distinctive difference of Mr. Darwin's mode of producing the various
animals; namely, that it is unintelligent, their variations are not
designed nor intended by the Creator, but they are the results of a
method of trial and error, producing a hit-and-miss pattern. The
failures all perish, and the successes live and prosper; but there is no
intentional or special guidance of God in the business. And the business
includes the whole process of peopling the globe, from the creation of
the first four or five germs down to the last formation of human
society. God is thus dismissed from the greatest part of the world's
life, including all human affairs. This is not exactly atheism in
theory, but practically it amounts to much the same thing.

It is this excommunication of God's agency from the management of the
world, and especially from human affairs, by Mr. Darwin's method, which
has so commended his books to the ungodly world. There is a general
agreement among this class of writers, that Mr. Darwin has destroyed the
basis of the argument for the being of God from design as displayed in
the adaptations of birds and beasts to their conditions. Mr. Huxley says
that "when he first read Mr. Darwin's book, what struck him most
forcibly was the conviction that teleology, as commonly understood, had
received its death blow at Mr. Darwin's hands."[10] "For the notion that
every organism has been created as it is, and launched straight at a
purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may
fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary
incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding
conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become
extinguished. * * * For the teleologist (the Christian) an organism
exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it was found.
For the Darwinian an organism exists, because out of many of its kind it
is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in
which it was found. * * * If we apprehend the spirit of the Origin of
Species rightly, then nothing can be more entirely and absolutely
opposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than the Darwinian
theory."[11] Prof. Haeckel argues to the same purpose that Darwin's
theory leads inevitably to Atheism and Materialism. Dr. Buchner says of
Darwin's theory, "It is the