lectual offspring, there is evidence of a like capacity, enough and to spare, at more ancient epochs and on a lowlier field. If History, co-witness to a Sacred Literature-the 'gulf-stream' that warms the waters of the human Atlantic-postulates a method of Divine Election; nations chosen for leading tasks in the development of humanity; one chosen in special as the ark of its prophets, and the cradle of its Divine Master and Head;--this also is strictly congruous to that working of Creative Will which placed an elect nature on the earth, and seems its fitting consummation and copestone. If Christian religion demands the concession of power strictly miraculous within the human period, an earlier record that compels assent to its demonstrations refuses to part with the proclamation of it. If type, which is unspoken prophecy, be thought an unworthy vehicle of Creative purpose, it is at least anticipated in that system whose converging symmetries led up to man. Such and such-like is the writing "graven in the rock for ever." The stony records, it is true, offer no entrenchments to undiscriminating prejudice, and no consecration to reverenced illusions: on the contrary, they uplift warning, legible and audible, where there is wisdom to look and patience to listen, against the danger that accrues to

faith from exaggerated dogmatism, or from rash implication of Divine authority with the inexperienced interpretations of the human understanding 114 But all the more impressive is their serene and silent protest against undisciplined and reactionary impatience of the supernatural, involving the substitution of an omnivorous credulity for the reverent and rational recognition of the handiwork of God. Schemes conceived in this spirit will have their day, and will run their course; greeted as they appear with the halleluias of materialism and the jubilation of the sceptic. But they will pass away, and their place will nowhere be found. It will be seen that the grand transitions of animated being are due, not to the blindfold ebullience of nature, but to the ordered onstep of the Almighty. The unswerving fidelities of the realm of instinct will correct the aberrations of perverted reason: "the dumb ass, speaking with man's voice, will rebuke the madness of the prophet. "

APPENDIX.

A.

ON THE VALIDITY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN.

The Argument from Design has been challenged metaphysically. Is it easier, it has been urged, to conceive of a Designer without antecedent design than of seeming design without an antecedent Designer? If the Supreme Contriver may exist uncontrived, may not man, or anything? True, man is wonderful, and may seem to have been made; but is God less wonderful, and who made the Maker? If God caused all things, what caused God? Is the difficulty involved in the fact that the human being is, abated by the hypothesis that the Divine Being was before it?

Let us probe this sophistry; and vindicate the validity by making plain the limitations of the Argument from Design.

Experience is our sole instructor within what limits it is necessary or possible to predicate causation of things around us. That causation has limits, is demonstrable. To the postulate-"Everything which exists has had a cause "—it is obvious to reply that something must always have existed uncaused, else nothing could be in existence now. On the other hand, causation, within certain limits, is demonstrated. The formula-"Nothing is an effect"-is as palpably false as its opposite. The truth therefore must reside in a medium proposition-"Certain things existing as they exist have a cause for their so existing. Here we seem to trace that frontier-line within which there is light, and beyond which there is darkness; within which, consequently, inference is legitimate, beyond which, speculation is vain. For a thing's being, we can give no reason; for its being as it is, we very generally can. For experience acquaints us with two orders of forces--forces of matter and forces of intelligence—which are con

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stantly operating two sets of results, each bearing the impress of its origin. Thus it is Wind that fills the sails of a ship on the ocean, and Mind that steers the helm. The forces thus broadly distinguishable supply our only notion of cause, and their respective results exhaust our knowledge of effect. It is certain that matter is susceptible of being modified by powers devoid of intelligence in themselves considered, as heat, gravity, electricity. It is also certain that matter is susceptible of being modified by intelligence itself, as when stone becomes a wall, or iron a knife, beneath the shaping skill of man. On these twin certainties then, on the reality of the distinction alleged between them, and on our ability to apply and reason from such distinction, does the present argument turn. Our ignorance does not invalidate our knowledge. That there are ultimate facts of which causation is not predicable is no reason for declining to predicate causation of facts distinctly extricated from that category. What order of causation is required to account for any fact so extricatedwhether e.g. the first human pair owed their origin to non-conscious Law or to Designing Mind-depends on the comparison of the fact so extricated with the observed capacities of given causes to produce given effects. With the mysteriousness of these causes we have no concern. They exist, and the effects do not exist without them. How things are at all we know not how they are as they are, in certain cases, we, by adequate observation and just inference, know. Gravity may be due to nothing; but the shape of the earth, not the less surely, is due to gravity. Mind may be the work of nothing; but not the less surely, the work of Mind.

the structure of the Eye is,

Be it noted precisely how the argument stands. Its chemical constitution out of view,* we do not believe in God because matter IS. We should not simplify the problem of a presumptively eternal matter by under-propping it, so to say, with a presumptively Eternal Spirit. To suppose matter the product of intelligence removes no difficulty. The fact is of parallel simplicity with the proffered explanation.

Nor again do we believe in God on account of the non-numerical

* Sir John Herschel, in addressing the Royal Society (1845), remarked: "These discoveries (definite chemical proportion) effectually destroy the idea of a self-existent matter, by giving to each of its atoms at once the essential characters of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent." Although therefore "neither astronomical nor geological science affects to state anything concerning the first origin of matter," (Essays and Reviews, p. 218), chemical science confirms the doctrine of the Mosaic cosmogony."