Consider what is implied in the text.
I. What a number of beautiful and wonderful objects does nature present on every side of us, and how little we know concerning them! Why do rivers flow? Why does rain fall? Why does the sun warm us? And the wind why does it blow? Here our natural reason is at fault; we know that it is the spirit in man and in beast that makes man and beast move, but reason tells us of no spirit abiding in what is called the natural world, to make it perform its ordinary duties. Now here Scripture interposes, and seems to tell us that all this wonderful harmony is the work of angels. Those events which we ascribe to chance, as the weather, or to nature, as the seasons, are duties done to that God who maketh His angels to be winds, and His ministers a flame of fire. Nature is not inanimate; its daily toil is intelligent; its works are duties.Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God in heaven.
II. While this doctrine raises the mind and gives it a matter of thought, it is also profitable as a humbling doctrine. Theories of science are useful, as classifying, and so assisting us to recollect, the works and ways of God and of His ministering angels. And again, they are ever most useful in enabling us to apply the course of His providence and the ordinances of His will to the benefit of man. Thus we are enabled to enjoy God's gifts; and let us thank Him for the knowledge which enables us to do so, and honour those who are His instruments in communicating it. But if such a one proceeds to imagine that, because he knows something of this world's wonderful order, he therefore knows howthings really go on; if he treats the miracles of nature as mere mechanical processes, continuing their course by themselves; if in consequence he is what may be called irreverent in his conduct towards nature, thinking (if I may so speak) that it does not hear him, and see how he is bearing himself towards it; and if, moreover, he conceives that the order of nature, which he partially discerns, will stand in the place of the God who made it, and that all things continue and move on not by His will and power and the agency of the thousands and ten thousands of His unseen servants, but by fixed laws, self-caused and self-sustained, what a poor weak worm and miserable sinner he becomes! When we converse on subjects of nature scientifically, repeating the names of plants and earths and describing their properties, we should do so religiously, as in the hearing of the great servants of God, with the sort of diffidence which we always feel when speaking before the learned and wise of our own mortal race, as poor beginners in intellectual knowledge as well as in moral attainments.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. ii., p. 358.
In the present day a large number of scientific men maintain that the appearance of design in nature is an appearance only, not a reality. This view is supposed to be established in two ways: first, by the general doctrine of the universal reign of law; and secondly, by the particular theory of evolution.
I. Look, first, at the argument drawn from the universality of law. Law is a very misleading word. Law only means invariable sequence. You will sometimes hear it said, the universe is governed by laws. The universe is notgoverned by laws. It is governed accordingto laws, but no one can suppose that the laws make themselves; no one can imagine, for example, that water determines of its own accord always to freeze at one temperature and to boil at another, that snowflakes make up their minds to assume certain definite and regular shapes, or that fire burns of malice aforethought. The sequences of nature do not explain themselves. The regularity of nature, then, needs to be explained. It cannot explain itself, nor can it disprove the existence of a controlling will. The only reign of law incompatible with volition would be the reign of the law of chaos.
II. Look at the bearing of the theory of evolution upon theology. We will suppose, for argument's sake, that even in its most comprehensive shape the doctrine has been proved true; what is the effect upon our theology? Why, simply that a certain mode of statement of a certain argument of Paley's is seen to be unsound. And this unsoundness has been already recognised on other grounds. Paley maintained that every definite organ and portion of an organ throughout the world is specially, by a particular creative fiat, adapted to a certain end, just as every portion of a watch implies a special contrivance on the part of the watchmaker. But this, as every one now knows, is completely disproved by the existence in most animals of rudimentary and abortive organs, which are evidently not adapted to any end, as, for example, the rudiments of fingers in a horse's hoof, the teeth in a whale's mouth, or the eyes in an unborn mole. But though we no longer profess to trace Divine design in every minute fraction of an organism, this does not hinder us from seeing it in organisms regarded in their entirety and in nature considered as a whole.
The doctrine of the survival of the fittest does not account for the fact that there are fittest to survive. Evolution does not disprove a Designer; it only proves that He works in a different way from what had been supposed. There is no reason why things may not be made fortheir circumstances, though they are partly made bythem. The fact that natural forces work together regularly and methodically does not prove that they have no master; it suggests rather His absolute control. The eternal evolution of the more desirable from the less cannot be logically accounted for except on the ground that it is effected by infinite power, and wisdom, and skill.
A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil, and Other Sermons,p. 271.
References: Psalms 104:4. J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor,1st series, vol. viii., p. 461.