Law and intelligence in nature : and the improvement of the race in accordance with law / by A.B. Palmer.

  • Alonzo Benjamin Palmer
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Law and intelligence in nature : and the improvement of the race in accordance with law / by A.B. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the production of something out of nothing, or, at least, that a process was implied indicating supernatural action. Not conceiving of derivative creation—which is a new arrangement of existing materials under intelligence and law, as we speak of making a knife or creating wealth—they have opposed the doctrine of creation altogether, regarding it as absolute, in the imagined interests of physical science. Others, supposing that by “evolution” was necessarily meant a denial of Divine action and the rejection of the doc- trine of Divine Providence, have therefore combated the theory of development, natural selection, etc., in the imagined interests of religion. There is nothing in the evolution theory, as I understand it, even if there be included in it the change of non-living matters into living without the intervention of parents, which in any way excludes Divine action or the doctrines of Providence, general or special. It may be regarded as merely a question of the manner of Divine action, and he who con- tends that living beings must be produced in any particular way or ways, imposes more limits upon the Omnipotent—does more to deny what we believe of His power than he who in humility and sincerity inquires for the facts and is ready cheerfully to accept whatever is proved. This is not only the scientific, hut it is equally the reverential and religious spirit. It is the spirit of faith as well as of truth. It manifests con- fidence in the religious principles in which one stands. This is not only in accordance with reason, hut with ecclesiastical authority. St. Augustine, whose authority in the earlier Christian ages stands above that of any other writer, contends in very explicit terms for the merely derivative sense in which God’s creation' of organic forms is to be understood—that they were created by His having conferred upon the material world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions. And St. Thomas Aquinas, whose authority in the church in the Middle Ages>
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