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of that which awaits him beyond the grave. Death must come, 
and in the thought of it there is suggested their alternative of 
annihilation or a future judgment. If the soul is immortal, an 
immortal and all-powerful God exists, and the idea of responsi- 
bility comes in. If it perish with the body, the prospect is 
not one to be accepted willingly except in the dark hours to 
which the author of the Belfast Address feelingly alludes in his 
preface. 
And it is plain that Mr. Mill had thought deeply of all these 
things, and has drawn conclusions from his thoughts which 
are, in my opinion, amongst the most melancholy perversions 
of truth which exist on record. 
With respect to the supernatural in general, he concludes 
that the rational attitude of a thinking mind is that of scep- 
ticism, as distinguished from belief on the one hand and 
from atheism on the other. 
But from the consideration of the eye, he is led to the con- 
clusion that it has its origin in an intelligent will, and rejects 
the solution which might be effected by the theory of the 
Survival of the Fittest; and, "on the whole, it must be 
allowed,” he says, "that in the present state of our knowledge 
the adaptation of nature affords a balance of probabilit} r in 
favour of creation by intelligence.” 
This admission is important as coming from him, but it will 
soon appear that we have no great cause for thankfulness. 
" Every indication of design in the Kosmos,” ho says, " is an 
evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer.” This 
may be a new and strange argument to some, bui he means 
that an omnipotent architect would have accomplished his 
work without successive steps indicating design. And now 
comes a quotation which makes us shudder, and which follows 
the attempted proof, that the intelligent Creator cannot be and 
is not omnipotent. 
" If man had not the power,” he says, " by the exercise of his 
own energies for the improvement both of himself and of his 
outward circumstances, to do for himself and other creatures 
vastly more than God had in the first instance done, the 
Being who called him into existence would deserve something 
very different from thanks at his hands.” 
The blasphemy of this passage, from our point of view, is 
only equalled by the shallowness of its philosophy.* 
* There is nothing new or original in this idea of a God of limited power, 
though it has been proved on a ■priori grounds to be metaphysically impossible. 
See Dr. S. Clarke’s Being and A ttributes of God, prop. x. ; Oudworth’s 
Intellectual System, chap. ii. art. xvi., where the arguments of Lucretius are 
discussed ; and Lactantius, Be Ird Dei, cap. xiii. 
