214 life
only now and then, the Deity puts his hand directly to the work.” This view of
God’s relationship to the natural world appealed to Wright as an ideal solution
to the problem of reconciling the respective demands of science and Scripture.
As he later wrote, it “allows us to retain our conceptions of reality in the forces
of nature, makes room for miracles, and leaves us free whenever necessary, as
in the case of the special endowments of man’s moral nature, to supplement
natural selection with the direct interference of the Creator.”^30
In making the case for the natural origin of species, Wright blunted the
possible psychological shock of Darwin’s theory by retaining such familiar
concepts as God, miracles, and the special creation of humans. He also re-
peatedly used language that seemed to restrict natural selection to the lower
end of the taxonomic scale while attributing kingdoms and the broader taxo-
nomic groupings to special creation. According to Wright’s paraphrase of Dar-
win’s views, “The Creator first breathed life into one, or more probably, four
or five, distinct forms,” after which a process combining miraculous variations
and natural selection split each “order” into families, genera, and species.
Wright thought the appearance of humans might legitimately remain outside
the evolutionary process, writing that “the miraculous creation of man might
no more disprove the general theory of natural selection than an ordinary
miracle of Christ would disprove the general reign of natural law.” Like Gray,
Wright derived great comfort from Darwin’s inability to explain the origin of
the variations preserved by natural selection, because this limitation seemed
to open the door for divine intervention. It “rob[bed] Darwinism of its sting,”
“left God’s hands as free as could be desired for contrivances of whatever sort
he pleased,” and preserved a “reverent interpretation of the Bible.”^31
Because he believed that the inspired writers intended only to state the
“fact of creation by divine agency”—not to provide a historically or scientifically
accurate account of creation—Wright professed to see “no difficulty at all in
adjusting the language of the first chapter of Genesis to that expressing the
derivative origin of species.” But he remained too much of a biblical literalist
simply to dismiss the story of Eve’s creation from one of Adam’s ribs. And,
though he readily accepted the natural evolution of the human body, he insisted
on a supernatural infusion of the soul. “No! man is not merely a developed
animal; but the inventive genius displayed in the rudest flint implement
stamps him as a new creation,” he declared. “The new creation, however, is
spiritual rather than material or physical.”^32
As far as I can tell, Wright experienced little, if any, psychological trauma
in absorbing this watered-down version of Darwinism. A serious crisis of faith
did not erupt till the early 1890s, and then from higher criticism, not evolution.
Wright’s long-festering fears about the implications of higher criticism for an
orthodox view of the Bible reached a critical level when he fell under the “spell”
of the eloquent and controversial Charles A. Briggs (1841–1913), a Presbyterian
theologian who rejected the inerrancy of the original scriptural autographs and