The failures all perish, and the successes live and prosper; but there is no intentional or special guidance of God in the business.

And the business includes the whole process of peopling the globe, from the creation of the first four or five germs down to the last formation of human society.

God is thus dismissed from the greatest part of the world's life, including all human affairs.

This is not exactly atheism in theory, but practically it amounts to much the same thing.
It is this excommunication of God's agency from the management of the world, and especially from human affairs, by Mr.Darwin's method, which has so commended his books to the ungodly world.

There is a general agreement among this class of writers, that Mr.Darwin has destroyed the basis of the argument for the being of God from design as displayed in the adaptations of birds and beasts to their conditions.