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memory, that each seemed to be a real advance towards axio- 
matic knowledge. Both were introduced with much literary 
grace, and with copious familiar illustration, and although 
recent geological research has disproved Uniformitarianism, 
and recent Biology has disowned Darwinism, yet the influence 
of their easy fascination still pervades the world. 
8. It is in order to examine the bearing of some old argu- 
ments on the new facts that I have chosen the present subject. 
9. Of the material universe, and of life on the earth, it may 
be alike said that they are moving, moving either towards a 
boundary or into infinity, either by ordination or by self- 
caused development. In the former case we are under the 
necessity of postulating a Lawgiver, in the latter case we arc 
under no such necessity, and must simply leave this question 
as we found it. 
10. I desire to oppose both Atheism and Agnosticism ; 
both the conclusion that there is no God, and the doctrine 
that we cannot possibly know of any. Atheism does not 
now rear itself up in noisy opposition to religion, but, 
looking at material phenomena, calmly announces that no 
God is there, and further, that not being there, He can 
be nowhere else, and that we are governed by the con- 
ditions in which we are found. It declares that this per- 
suasion is a stage, the present stage, in the history of all 
things, and that the reign of virtue on the earth, about 
to spring from social science, is the bright future of hu- 
manity. It addresses us in untechnical phrases, and appeals 
to our love of independence and freedom. It denies the 
existence of religious instinct in man, and of any religion 
higher than social virtue, and, of course, ignores a future 
life as well as God. Leaving to others the task of showing 
how much narrower is this specific than is the need for it, 
my aim is to prove that external nature is absolutely 
unequal to the task of government thus imposed on it, 
because it is itself a finite creature, and the ruler required 
is one higher than the finite : that modern philosophy, which 
subordinates man to his environments, i.e. to nature, is 
confuted by the consideration that both nature and man are 
equally subordinated to some higher law. 
11. The reiteration of the argument may be tedious, but 
when propositions which were supposed to have been long ago 
dead and buried, are summoned from their graves, and walk 
about at noon-day, it ought not to be objected that they en- 
counter forms as antiquated as themselves. The proposition 
that we know nothing, either one way or the other, as to the 
existence of God, is now made as the outcome of physical 
