An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the
ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it.
Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms
has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of
orthodoxy. No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the
Rev. Prof. Zoeckler says of this movement to demonstrate creative
purpose and design, and of the men who took part in it, "The earth
appeared in their representation of it like a great clothing shop
and soup kitchen, and God as a glorified rationalistic professor."
Such a statement as this is far from just to the conceptions of
such men as Butler, Paley, and Chalmers, no matter how fully the
thinking world has now outlived them.[44]
But, noble as the work of these men was, the foundation of fact on
which they reared it became evidently more and more insecure.
For as far back as the seventeenth century acute theologians had
begun to discern difficulties more serious than any that had before
confronted them.
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