ABSTRACT
The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin described nature as a 'polity' with 'districts' and an 'economy', in which the structural features of beehives, for example, are compared to the work of architects, masons and painters. At the centre of Darwin's churchless conurbation, the 'polity of nature', stands the Tree of Life: The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. The Church might have appeared as the product of divine intervention at some point in the evolutionary process, but Darwin shows no glimmer of interest in such a possibility. The Church vanishes. It is 'absorbed' in a soteriologically undifferentiated humanity. Much the same might be said of Henry Drummond's interpretation of the Apocalypse, and of most liberal strands of nineteenth-century theology. The centrality of the eye to Darwin's famous work is one aspect of its apocalyptic tone.
