546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



proaching tlie city, saw a man distributing handbills. He resolved 

 that if these bills should turn out to relate to tea, he would follow 

 whatever guidance they might afford him. They were the adver- 

 tisements of a coffee and tea warehouse which had recently been 

 opened in the High Street. He went there, made an arrangement 

 with the proprietor, Mr. Irons, father of his biographer, and in the 

 spring of 1847 opened a shop in Elgin. The situation was con- 

 genial to him, and the business gave him opportunity to read. He 

 read Edwards on the Will ; was convinced by its reasoning ; and 

 in course of time failing to find in any of the writers of contrary 

 opinions to Edwards what he considered effective answers to his 

 arguments, from a sturdy Arminian and sympathizer with the 

 Rev. James Morison, founder of the Evangelical Union of Scot- 

 land (now united with the Congregational Union), he became a 

 fixed Calvinist. The tea business had begun to be a paying one, 

 but the condition of Mr. Croll's arm becoming such that he was 

 unable to attend to the shop properly, he was obliged, in order to 

 avoid future loss, to give it up and retire to Perth. 



He supported himself for a little while making induction ap- 

 paratus for the curative application of electricity and galvanism ; 

 then, on the persuasion of a friend who had premises to let, en- 

 gaged in keeping a temperance hotel at Blair- Go wrie. The house 

 was not furnished, and, having no means to buy furniture, he made 

 it while the building was being finished. The hotel business 

 proved unsuccessful, and Croll's next effort was as a canvassing 

 agent for insurance companies, in which occupation he spent four 

 years and a half about the most disagreeable part, he says, of 

 his life. 



About this time Mr. Croll published his first books, which in- 

 dicated a leaning of his mind toward theological speculation. 

 They were a pamphlet on Predestination, signed "A Moderate 

 Calvinist," and pronounced by the Rev. Dr. Morison " an extraor- 

 dinary production " ; a pamphlet on the Bearing of Geology and 

 Astronomy upon the Creation of the World ; and a larger work 

 on The Philosophy of Theism, a thoughtful book, displaying 

 considerable philosophical insight and accumen, which was ea- 

 gerly discussed by a knot of students who used to meet with the 

 author. The direct object of this work was defined in the preface 

 to be not to prove the existence of God, but to investigate the 

 method to be pursued in order to arrive at a proof of his exist- 

 ence ; or, as the author described it to Dr. Morison, the solution 

 of the problem, Given an organic body, to show how it can be 

 rationally proved that its cause must have been a personality en- 

 dowed with intelligence, will, and sensitivity. The author main- 

 tained that a purely a priori or a purely a posteriori proof of the 

 existence of God is impossible, and that the only way is by a 



