WHAT IS CREATION? 227 



The philosophical Atheist feels the force of these 

 difficulties, and with a prudence that would be 

 admirable did it not raise a suspicion of mental 

 cowardice or prejudice, he adopts the easier method 

 of simply ignoring the whole question. The reality 

 of a primal Cause is not denied, it is declared to 

 be of no importance. The belief in a Creator is 

 superfluous, the universe can be adequately explained 

 without it. But what an impotent conclusion to 

 arrive at, and how unscientific the position of him 

 who reaches it ! Here he stands in the midst of 

 order, beauty, life, without seeking any Author of 

 all this. Here are magnitudes compared with which 

 he is a pigmy ', here is a mechanism in the presence 

 of whose intricacies he seems a child ; around him 

 are forces and energies before which he is helpless ; 

 all existing before he came to look upon them, 

 unfading when he dies. Yet he is content to gaze 

 upon all these marvels and never to consider whence 

 they came or how they originated. Is this a 

 scientific attitude to occupy? And yet it is the 

 great boast of Agnosticism that it is scientific. It 

 is astonishing how words can be abused and per- 

 verted. 



The position of the Agnostic is that of a man 

 who walks through a well-ordered garden, admiring 

 the perfection of the agriculture, delighting in the 

 perfumes and tints of the flowers, refreshing himself 

 with the luscious fruits, and then exclaiming : " I see 

 no evidences here that this place belongs to anybody; 

 I can enjoy all these charms without troubling over 

 the supernatural question as to who is the owner ; 



