That we should have to develop it,
I do not deny. That we should have to relinquish it, I do.
Let me press this thought earnestly on you. I know that many wiser
and better men than I have fears on this point. I cannot share in
them.
All, it seems to me, that the new doctrines of Evolution demand is
this. We all agree, for the fact is patent, that our own bodies,
and indeed the body of every living creature, are evolved from a
seemingly simple germ by natural laws, without visible action of any
designing will or mind, into the full organisation of a human or
other creature. Yet we do not say, on that account: God did not
create me; I only grew. We hold in this case to our old idea, and
say: If there be evolution, there must be an evolver. Now the new
physical theories only ask us, it seems to me, to extend this
conception to the whole universe: to believe that not individuals
merely, but whole varieties and races, the total organised life on
this planet, and it may be the total organisation 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.
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