ON THE UNRRASONABLENESS OF AGNOSTICISM. 71 



what would India and Africa be without their mountains ? 

 Without the Himalayas no great Mustakli glacier, and without 

 this 36 miles of ice there would have been but puny streams 

 in tlie place of the mighty rivers of the present day — if, indeed, 

 there would be any rivers at all. 



Without the mountains of Abyssinia, there would be no 

 Lake Nyanza or Victoria, and without these no Nile, and 

 what would Egypt be without her one water-course ? With- 

 out the snows on the mountains of Central Africa, there 

 would be no rising of the Nile, even if the river existed. And 

 without the annual inundation caused by the rise of the Nile, 

 Egypt would long ago have been a great Sahara. 



Surely, then, we are justified in attributing the present 

 arrangement in this particular to the operations of intelligence 

 — intelligence guided by benevolence ; and lience, as we look 

 at the hills and mountains rearing their summits higher and 

 higher as they approach, the equatorial region, we see the 

 marks, tbe footprints, of a personality, — in other words, the 

 footprints of God, whom we are tbus able to recognise, and 

 on those very summits that proclaim His existence we can 

 hold conscious intercourse with their Maker. 



3. We can recognise Ood in the operations of the laws ivliich 

 fjovern matter, and in some cases, as with water, the heneficent 

 exception to a general law. One of the effects of heat is 

 expansion, and the abstraction of heat is accompanied by con- 

 traction. Now, water is an exception to tbis general rule, 

 being expanded both by heat and by cold. Between the 

 temperatures of 40° F. and 212° F. water expands fully one- 

 thirtieth of its bulk; but when it is at 40° F. its greatest 

 density is obtained, and any further cooling causes the water 

 to expand, so that its tendency is to rise and occupy the 

 surface. In this way the top layer is the first to attain the 

 temperature of 32°, and crystallise into a thin film of ice, 

 while below it the water retains its temperature of greatest 

 density of 40°. Now, as neither ice nor water is able to 

 conduct heat with rapidity, they have but little tendency to 

 transmit the cold downwards. Hence, the ice is not only 

 slow in attaining any great thickness, but it also protects the 

 water below from the effects of cold winds and low tem- 

 perature. Now, if it were not for this exception to the 

 general law, whenever ice was formed it would be at the 

 bottom of rivers and lakes, and they would, in the frigid 

 zones, long ago have become solid blocks of ice, which no 

 summer sun could have melted; and thus death and desola- 

 tion would have held their sway. But the Divine Mind, 

 seeing the end from the beginning, and having regard for the 



