In
this way Darwin brought intense relief as well as an enlarged knowledge
of facts to the humanitarians. He destroyed the omnipotence of God for
them; but he also exonerated God from a hideous charge of cruelty.
Granted that the comfort was shallow, and that deeper reflection was
bound to shew that worse than all conceivable devil-deities is a blind,
deaf, dumb, heartless, senseless mob of forces that strike as a tree
does when it is blown down by the wind, or as the tree itself is struck
by lightning. That did not occur to the humanitarians at the moment:
people do not reflect deeply when they are in the first happiness of
escape from an intolerably oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim
they could not see the wicket gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the
castle of Giant Despair; but they saw the shining light at the end of
the path, and so started gaily towards it as Evolutionists.
And they were right; for the problem of evil yields very easily to
Creative Evolution. If the driving power behind Evolution is omnipotent
only in the sense that there seems no limit to its final achievement;
and if it must meanwhile struggle with matter and circumstance by
the method of trial and error, then the world must be full of its
unsuccessful experiments.
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