regards the whole system of Nature as one which had received at its first formation the impress of the will of its Author, foreseeing the varied yet necessary laws of its action throughout the whole of its existence, ordaining when and bow each particular of the stupendous plan should be realized in effect, and—­with Him to whom to will is to do—­in ordaining doing it, Whether profoundly philosophical or not, a view maintained by eminent philosophical physicists and theologians, such as Babbage on the one hand and Jowett on the other, will hardly be denounced as atheism.  Perhaps Mr. Darwin would prefer to express his idea in a more general way, by adopting the thoughtful words of one of the most eminent naturalists of this or any age, substituting the word action for “thought,” since it is the former (from which alone the latter can be inferred) that he has been considering.  “Taking Nature as exhibiting thought for my guide, it appears to me that while human thought is consecutive, Divine thought is simultaneous, embracing at the same time and forever, in the past, the present and the future, the most diversified relations among hundreds of thousands of organized beings, each of which may present complications again, which to study and understand even imperfectly—­as for instance man himself—­ mankind has already spent thousands of years."[I-14] In thus conceiving of the Divine Power in act as coetaneous with Divine Thought, and of both as far as may be apart from the human element of time, our author may regard the intervention of the Creator either as, humanly speaking, done from all time, or else as doing through all time.  In the ultimate analysis we suppose that every philosophical theist must adopt one or the other conception.

A perversion of the first view leads toward atheism, the notion of an eternal sequence of cause and effect, for which there is no first cause—­a view which few sane persons can long rest in.  The danger which may threaten the second view is pantheism.  We feel safe from either error, in our profound conviction that there is order in the universe; that order presupposes mind; design, will; and mind or will, personality.  Thus guarded, we much prefer the second of the two conceptions of causation, as the more philosophical as well as Christian view—­a view which leaves us with the same difficulties and the same mysteries in Nature as in Providence, and no other.  Natural law, upon this view, is the human conception of continued and orderly Divine action.

We do not suppose that less power, or other power, is required to sustain the universe and carry on its operations, than to bring it into being.  So, while conceiving no improbability of “interventions of Creative mind in Nature,” if by such is meant the bringing to pass of new and fitting events at fitting times, we leave it for profounder minds to establish, if they can, a rational distinction in kind between his working in Nature carrying on operations, and in initiating those operations.