DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 411 



the best exponent of liberal theology, and the influence of whose 

 writings is more and more advancing its progress. Whilst 

 strenuously defending the Theistic position against its scientific as 

 well as its non-scientific assailants, Dr. Martineau has ever cor- 

 dially welcomed every real advance in science, not merely as 

 extending our knowledge of the material universe, but as leading 

 us to a more thorough recognition of its unity, its order, and its 

 harmony. And he has shown us how, by availing itself of the 

 highest and best results of scientific investigation, Theology is 

 expanding and elevating itself above the narrow limits of Mosaic 

 anthropomorphism, so as to reveal to us the Divine Thought as 

 pervading all space, and exerting itself in action through all time. 

 It was in this spirit that, two years ago, I reviewed, before a 

 different but kindred audience,* the bearing upon Theistic belief 

 of that doctrine of the progressive evolution of the inorganic 

 universe, which modern astronomical research, by the help of 

 methods of observation altogether new, has now established 

 beyond reasonable question. For, I maintained, if ever the 

 entire succession of changes by which the consolidation of the 

 original nebular matter into the multitude of suns and systems 

 that have sprung out of it, shall be scientifically shown to be the 

 work of physical forces acting in accordance with determinate 

 laws, we shall have only arrived at a knowledge of the Order of 

 Creation, and shall have advanced no nearer to that of its primal 

 Cause. The physicist who deduces from the activities of different 

 forms of matter certain " properties " which he attributes to 

 them, and then uses these very " properties " to account for those 

 activities, is obviously reasoning in a circle. What he calls " pro- 

 perties " and "laws" are really hw'i farms or categories under 

 which he finds it desirable to correlate those "uniformities of co- 

 existence and sequence" which his observation of nature brings 

 under his cognizance. " Why does an apple fall to the ground ? " 

 is a question which has as great a significance to us now, as it had 

 before Newton was led by pondering upon it to the discovery of 

 the law of gravitation. For that law only expresses the conditions 

 oj action of a universal force tending to draw together all masses of 



♦ "The Doctrine of Evolution in its Relations to Theism," — an address 

 delivered at Sion College, see p. 384- 



