THE HIGHER MINISTRY OF NATURE.*
THE unknown Hebrew Quaker who wrote the 119th Psalm had a very profound belief in what Mr. Leifchild happily terms the higher ministry of Nature. He believed in the reign of Law. Amid the disorder in the human sphere, which at times drove him to the brink of madness or despair, which made "rivers of water run down from his eyes," he fled for refuge to the phenomenal Kos- mos, and there he found a preliminary consolation. The stars in their courses prophesied to him of a "word atablished in the heavens." Seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, day and night, in their orderly and beneficent succession, proclaimed them- selves to his listening ear the ever-obedient servants of an imperial fiat. In the realm of sense-perception, nothing erred from law ; and the trust of this struggling and devout Israelite was that all nature was parabolic, was symbolic of a still deeper law, operative and sovereign in the domain of reason and conscience. He hoped that the steadfast and strong "Word," which ruled with inexorable regeuoy in heaven and on earth, was only the out- ward and visible sign of the ultimate triumph of the inward Word in all hearts,—of that Ward which compelled him into the quest after truth and righteousness, as infinitely more precious posses- sions than aught that the whole world, apart from these, oould minister. But conspicuous, and at last supreme in its eminence and comforting power, "amid the multitude of his thoughts within him," was this conclusion,—that he was the workmanship of divine hands, that an unsleeping watchfulness was ordering his and the footsteps of all other men, and that in a sense that • could be predicated only of beings possessed of will and freedom like men, he was at liberty, and therefore bound, to cherish in his heart of hearts the in-dwelling impulse after an ever apprehensible, but always unapproachable ideal of the true, the good, and the beautiful. This Hebrew tells us that he was found while seeking after an objective source of law.
The question which Mr. Leifchild raises is this :—" Does modern science rob us of the Gospel which Nature published to the medi- tative mind more than 2,000 years ago?" We do not think that it does. On the contrary, and differing in this respect from Mr. Leifchild, we are, in a theological point of view, entirely of the opinion, that supposing Mr. Darwin's inquiries to be true to fact, they would only, as their legitimate expression, lead us to exclaim :—" I will give thanks unto thee, for I am fear- fully and wonderfully made, though I be made secretly, and fashioned beneath in the earth." Conceding to David Hume that the universe is a singular effect, the admission does not preclude the idea of causation. As it seems to us, it involves it, for an effect, however singular, is not synonymous with fortui- tous phenomena. Origination must be singular. It is none the less apprehensible. The Origin of Species must have had an origin. There is no imaginable means of development from the inorganic to that which lives and moves and has a being organi- cally, and it is not Mr. Darwin who affirms that there is. Indeed, it may be confessed that while Mr. Darwin has occasioned not a little dismay amongst the "fearful," though professedly not " unbelieving " sections of English society, his books have helped the present writer into a larger faith in an original purpose in the complex phenomena of life than he possessed before. And we are just a little surprised that so intelligent and cultivated a man as Mr. Leifchild shows himself in this volume to be, should write as he does of the speculations of the author of the Descent of Man. For, after all, they are only speculations. Mr. Darwin does not ignore, any more than Mr. Wallace does, the quite unspeakable differentia of man from all the other existences around him, though perhaps we are not alto- gether prepared to abide by his doctrine, either respecting the genesis of conscience or respecting that of the persistency of the social affections. Nay, more, we very much sympathise with Mr. Leifchild when he says that in a certain passage Mr. Darwin writes more like a Stoic of the type of Seneca than a Christian philosopher. But it seems to us that Mr. Leifchild, while he gives Mr. Darwin all due credit for his great candour, and for his loyal readiness, for instance, to admit that "the survival of the fittest" is not a rule without very remarkable exceptions, has not sufficiently * The Higher Minists7 of Haters, Viewed in the Light of )(octant Science, and as as Aid to Advanced Christian Philosophy. By John B. Leifchild, M.A. London : Hodder and Stoughton. estimated either the modesty of this great naturalist's assertions, or the courage with which he has left himself quite defenceless in what we may call the rear of his hypotheses. It would appear that one fine morning the Ascidian set out in search of Plato and Shakespeare, and Mr. Darwip indicates the successive stages of the quest, to us one of the greatest efforts of imagination we pos- sess. But Mr. Darwin must have been quite conscious as he wrote that it would immediately Occur to the most ordinarily intelligent of his readers to ask, where is the proof of this marvellous "ascent "—the word we first introduced in this journal some considerable time ago, and now adopted by Mr. Leifchild—and why do none of our "original relations," except when brought under the manipulation of man, ever show the least symptom of progressiveness, though, no doubt, the "con- sciousness of dogs" indicates how amenable to discipline the humbler grades of existence are ? Mr. Darwin, a true scientific "does not care for any of these things." He leaves his oppo- nrts to make of them what they please. But he has chosen to enter on lines on which, as it seems to us, the dens in machinei is required at every stage of development. For it is simply impossible, and we wonder so careful a student of Mr. Darwin as Mr. Leifchild did not note the impossibility, that any mere "Law of Creation" could of itself account for the successive phenomena which, on the assumption of its scientific truth, the theory of the Descent of Man necessitates. Mr. Leifchild, unless we have missed the passage, nowhere alludes to the once famous Vestiges of Crea- tion. Of course he must have read the book, and we interpret his silence respecting it to mean that, not only in regard to scientific accuracy, but as a metaphysical hypothesis, the teaching of the Vestiges was never to be mentioned in conjunction with that of Mr. Darwin. Mr. Leifchild, we are willing to believe, must have felt that an evolution ab extra from " fire-mist " to "man, with his strange discourse, looking before and after," was a conception—he could not call it an idea—too absurd, if not also too ludicrous, to be introduced, even in a foot-note, in a volume which undertakes to discuss a development entirely different in kind, viz., a develop- ment from within. But if this be the reason why no reference is made by our author to the work against which, though now pretty well forgotten or unknown, such men as Brewster and Hugh Miller deemed it imperative to cry aloud, it is curious that he did not in so many words inform us of the fact. And all the more, that be himself supplies a passage—most honestly repro- 1 duced—in which Mr. Darwin surrenders his primary affirmation into the hands of the theist, nay, even of the theologian. The passage is the following (quoted p. 208) :—" Therefore, I should infer, from analogy, that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from one form, into which life was breathed by the Creator." Here, clearly, is an admission which, the moment it was perceived by Mr. Leifchild, should have led him, not to shriek over Communism, as the inevitable outcome of Darwinism, but to be careful to inquire whether, after the spontaneous allowance just alluded to, Mr. Darwin did not throw over the whole range of existence a new shield of sacredness ; and whether, as we hinted a few sentences back, his theory did not demand a more constant intervention of the Divine Will than any other one which has ever been published to the world before. We know, for instance, what strange phenomena human births have presented. But we also know that in the embryonic condition, up to a certain stage, there is " a close similarity between man and the lower animals." In the third place, however, the abnormal births, the similarity of embryonic development not- withstanding, do not amount to an appreciable fraction in the existing human population of our globe ; and consequently, if the odds in the embryo are even, while yet the pointer dog, the shepherd's dog, the racehorse, the domestic cat, and man above all, remain with varying capacity, no doubt according to the calibre of the masculine or feminine parentage, yet each true to canine, equine, feline, and human antecedents, we see no alter- native in the respective r(sults save that of accepting, in each case, a special intervention.
But whether this special intervention be scientifically worthy of acceptation or not, Mr. Leifchild has no right whatever, after the distinct affirmation which Mr. Darwin has made respecting a "Creator," and especially as himself a believer in the New Testament narratives, after the voice which said to St. Peter, "What God has cleansed, that call not thou common or unclean," to write as he does:—" An Ascidian is the robt of this genealogical tree, abominable creeping things are on the trunk, while in the branches thereof all the unclean birds and flying things do rest." Bat Mr. Leif- child is not always in the same mood of sentiment in the course of his volume. He is not always inconsistent with what appears to be his deepest convictions. He writes very spas- modically, it is true, on the dreadful results which will flow from the prevalence of Darwinism. He calls in Mr. Wallace, the Duke of Argyll, and others, to aid him in a protest which may quiet the apprehensions of the respectably orthodox ; but in the end he thus writes, and writes like a man, courageous and inde- pendent :—" My final speculation in this direction is this : If there exist continuity, in the sense of gradual succession, throughout all nature, why not carry the doctrine one step farther, and suggest the probability of angelic and human continuity ? " We reply, —Why not, indeed ? But Mr. Leifchild himself answers the question, in the main, as we would do. His answer, it has to be owned, implies, or rather expresses, a large concession as regards the ultimate destiny of certain members of the " continu- ous " human family to the lovers of damnatory creeds. Neverthe- less, the net result/ which the perusal of his thoughtful, pains- taking, and earnest, if just a trifle too homiletic and inconsistent volume, has yielded us is this :—" If Darwinism be, in Butler's sense of the word, probable, what a grand future is awaiting man ; if the human race has ascended to its present status from the Ascidian, and if Christ, as we believe, has appeared as one of that race — "in all things made like unto his brethren "—what possibilities of " sweetness and light," or, in Biblical phraseology, of "grace and truth," are not in store for all who wear the human form ! May we not say, in the blended light of modern speculation and Christian fact, with vastly augmented emphasis, "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly," while a quite new significance would be imparted to other words of St. Paul, applying them prophetically to each individual man,—" He that ascended is he that first descended into the lowermost parts of the earth."
Finally, Darwinism, assuming an evolution from within, supplies a fruitfully suggestive analogy for the development of spiritual Christianity. Au inward light, ministered, according to Mr. Darwin, by "the Creator "—call it natural or sexual selection, or what you please—has guided the first factor in the development up to the existing progressive state of humanity. It was to a similar in- ward principle of perception and selection that Christ committed the Church, and if true to it, who would venture to predict that the coming religion—" the Christ that is to be "—will not issue in the recognition of a higher ministry of Nature, in an at-onement of belief and science which it has scarcely yet entered into the imagination of.man to conceive ?
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