On Calvinism and Darwinism

[John Bauer]

If Darwinism appears to banish design from nature and to be fatalistic, it is only because it is liable to the same class of misunderstandings against which Calvinism has had so constantly to contend. … and we may conclude that, not improperly, Darwinism has been styled the “Calvinistic interpretation of nature.” Through philosophic study both of the system of nature and of grace we come back at length to the central throne of God, from whose all-comprehensive ideas streams of creating and directing power flow across the gulf of time in continuous and orderly measure.

– George Frederick Wright, “Recent Works Bearing on the Relation of Science to Religion: No. V—Some Analogies between Calvinism and Darwinism,” Bibliotheca Sacra 37 (January 1880): 76.

The one absolutely impossible conception of God, in the present day, is that which represents him as an occasional visitor. Science has pushed the deist's God further and further away and, at the moment when it seemed as if he would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives: Either God is everywhere present in nature, or he is nowhere.

– Aubrey L. Moore, “The Christian Doctrine of God,” in Charles Gore, ed., Lex Mundi, no. 12 (London: Murray, 1891), 73.