most thoroughly naturalistic that can be
imagined, and far more atheistic than that of his decried predecessor,
Lamarck." Carl Vogt also commends it because "It turns the Creator, and
his occasional intervention in the revolution of the earth and in the
production of species, without any hesitation out of doors, inasmuch as
it does not leave the smallest room for the agency of such a Being. The
first living germ being granted, out of it the creation develops itself
progressively by Natural Selection, through all the geologic periods of
our planet, by the simple law of descent. No new species arise by
creation, and none perishes by annihilation; the natural cause of
things, the process of evolution of all organisms, and of the earth
itself, is of itself sufficient for the production of all we see. Thus
man is not a special creation, produced in a different way, and distinct
from other animals, endowed with an individual soul, and animated by the
breath of God; on the contrary, man is only the highest product of the
progressive evolution of animal life, springing from the group of apes
next below him."[12]

Whether, therefore, Mr. Darwin himself intends his theory to be
atheistic or not, it has had the misfortune to be so viewed by the
greater number of its supporters; and, accordingly, it is this view of
it which we shall keep prominent in the following discussion. Mr. Darwin
does undoubtedly intend his theory to be antagonistic to the Bible
account of creation and providence, and an improvement upon it; and,
whether atheistic or not, it is undoubtedly anti-Christian.

_I. The History of the Theory._

The first thing which strikes a common person on first hearing this
theory is that it is a very queer notion for any Christian man to
invent. We are naturally curious to know how a man, educated in a
Christian country, could have fallen into it. But it is, in fact, no new
discovery, but an old heathen superstition. Some four hundred years
before Christ, when the world had almost wholly apostatized into
idolatry, Democritus, among the Greeks, became offended with the vulgar
heathen gods, and set himself to invent a plan of the world without
them. From Eastern travelers the Greeks knew that the Brahmins, in
India, had a theory of the world developing itself from a primeval egg.
He set himself to refine upon it, and imagined virtually the Nebular
Hypothesis. He said that all matter consisted of very small atoms,
dancing