doctrine of purpose
which relied upon evidences always exceptional however numerous.
Science persistently presses on to find the universal machinery of
adaptation in this planet; and whether this be found in selection, or
in direct-effect, or in vital reactions resulting in large changes, or
in a combination of these and other factors, it must always be opposed
to the conception of a Divine Power here and there but not everywhere
active.

For science, the Divine must be constant, operative everywhere and in
every quality and power, in environment and in organism, in stimulus
and in reaction, in variation and in struggle, in hereditary
equilibrium, and in "the unstable state of species"; equally present
on both sides of every strain, in all pressures and in all
resistances, in short in the general wonder of life and the world. And
this is exactly what the Divine Power must be for religious faith.

The point I wish once more to make is that the necessary readjustment
of teleology, so as to make it depend upon the contemplation of the
whole instead of a part, is advantageous quite as much to theology as
to science. For the older view failed in courage. Here again our
theism was not sufficiently theistic.

Where results seemed inevitable, it dared not claim them as God-given.
In the argument from Design it spoke not of God in the sense of
theology, but of a Contriver, immensely, not infinitely wise and good,
working within a world, the scene, rather than the ever dependent
outcome, of His Wisdom; working in such emergencies and opportunities
as occurred, by forces not altogether within His control, towards an
end beyond Himself. It gave us, instead of the awful reverence due to
the Cause of all substance and form, all love and wisdom, a
dangerously detached appreciation of an ingenuity and benevolence
meritorious in aim and often surprisingly successful in contrivance.

The old teleology was more useful to science than to religion, and
the design-naturalists ought to be gratefully remembered by
Biologists. Their search for evidences led them to an eager study of
adaptations and of minute forms, a study such as we have now an
incentive to in the theory of Natural Selection. One hardly meets with
the same ardour in microscopical research until we come to modern
workers. But the argument from Design was never of great importance to
faith. Still, to rid it of this character was worth all the stress and
anxiety of the galla