ng it to the purpose or agency of God. This is done expressly by
Buechner, Haeckel, Vogt, and Strauss. The opponents of Darwinism direct
their objections principally against this element of the doctrine. This,
as was stated by Rev. Dr. Peabody, was the main ground of the earnest
opposition of Agassiz to the theory. America's great botanist, Dr. Asa
Gray, avows himself an evolutionist; but he is not a Darwinian. Of that
point we have the clearest possible proof. Mr. Darwin, after explicitly
denying that the variations which have resulted in "the formation of the
most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were
intentionally and specially guided," adds: "However much we may wish it,
we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief 'that variation
has been led along certain beneficial lines' like a stream 'along
definite and useful lines of irrigation.'"[58] If Mr. Darwin does not
agree with Dr. Gray, Dr. Gray does not agree with Mr. Darwin. It is as
to the exclusion of design from the operations of nature that our
American, differs from the English, naturalist. This is the vital point.
The denial of final causes is the formative idea of Darwin's theory, and
therefore no teleologist can be a Darwinian.

Dr. Gray quotes from another writer the sentence, "It is a singular
fact, that when we can find how anything is done, our first conclusion
seems to be that God did not do it;" and then adds, "I agree with the
writer that this first conclusion is premature and unworthy; I will add,
deplorable. Through what faults of dogmatism on the one hand, and
skepticism on the other, it came to be so thought, we need not here
consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last;
that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of
the fixedness of the earth itself, may equally outlast the notion of the
absolute fixedness of the species which inhabit it; that in the future,
even more than in the past, faith in an _order_, which is the basis of
science, will not--as it cannot reasonably--be dissevered from faith in
an _Ordainer_, which is the basis of religion."[59] We thank God for
that sentence. It is the concluding sentence of Dr. Gray's address as
ex-President of "The American Association for the Advancement of
Science," delivered August, 1872.

Dr. Gray goes further. He says, "The proposition that the things and
events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried ou