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Dr. Irons. — I came here thinking that I was going to hear something 
very different from what I have listened to this evening. I must say I 
have been agreeably surprised, and I think we must all have been pleased 
with the paper. I myself am grateful for the very complete view of the 
subject that has been furnished. But yet the essayist is a little unfair to Paley 
in putting him in the position apparently adopted. (Hear, hear.) Paley was 
a great man, his work a great work. As an Oxford man, I did not make 
so good an acquaintance with him formerly as I have since had. We surely 
all consider him as something more than Dr. Thompson at first represents him 
to be. He was much more than a mere stater of the position that “ where there 
is design there must be a designer.” When Paley afterwards comes to deal 
with the truth that the personal God is the Designer, he does not quite 
satisfy me metaphysically. I do say, however, he affirmed the same truth in 
his proposition as Dr. Thompson has defended to-night. For I cannot see 
the least difference between “ the adjustment of phenomena for an intelligent 
purpose ” (as in the paper) and “ design with a designer behind it.” It seems to 
me that Dr. Thompson’s words are to the same effect as Paley’s. Paley 
could not have meant anything else than Dr. Thompson. He was no crude, 
careless writer, who took up a proposition in order merely to prove it by some 
simple rule of Whatelyan logic. He was a careful dealer with facts. A Tyndall 
could not be more careful. He laid the foundation of his argument as any 
Huxley or Tyndall might have done. And there is something touching in the 
story of Archdeacon Paley, when his health was enfeebled and he could do 
but little actively for the Church, setting himself to study the facts of human 
anatomy and science, in order that he might use this knowledge to illustrate 
the truth and wisdom of God whom he loved and served. There was some- 
thing touching, I say, in the way he devoted himself to the late acquisition 
of the knowledge which he intended so to use. But who can read his 
book through, without feeling that it is true, painstaking, careful ? And to 
this day it is read with great profit by the young men of the Universities, and, I 
would add, by old men too, like ourselves,- — though it may be some forty years 
since I read very much of it. Paley has been used on this occasion, however, 
so as to point the excellent argument of Dr. Thompson, while Hume has 
happily been brought forward to receive a crushing rejoinder. We are 
grateful then to Dr. Thompson for having given us a noble paper. But while 
saying this, it would seem ungrateful if we were to pass over entirely all the 
special features of the paper. I will turn aside then for a moment just to 
take notice of one point which seems to require a little clearing up. The 
professor said that “ forces in nature were qualities of the things themselves.” 
Dr. Thompson. — What I said was that force was a property of cause, not of 
things themselves. 
Dr. Irons. — Yes, but I thought you said that though the facts led us at last 
to argue a cause ; the phenomenon induced us to suppose force latent in the 
thing, and that after this we argued a cause beyond. 
Dr. Thompson. — No, I did not say a force latent in itself. 
Dr. Irons.— But I have something to ask, even as you now put the matter. 
