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acknowledge, a law-maker to reverence. But I would ask in all serious- 
ness whether any form of the evolution hypothesis, which dissevers God 
from all that follows upon the primal act of creation, is consistent with 
serious belief in His existence, — in fact, belief in a living God? What 
man could worship, pray to, love, or adore such hypothetical first cause ? 
I beg of you to consider whether this conception of the operation of a once- 
creating, once law-enacting first cause in a past inconceivably remote is an 
adequate substitute for the theistic idea which has been held for more than 
two thousand years. However positively some may affirm that the view 
objected to is not atheistic, it must be held to be of this nature unless the 
word is used in a sense which no one who believes in a God could allow. I 
have myself often begged for information concerning the powers and 
attributes of the God sanctioned by the evolution hypothesis, but so far 
in vain. The suggestion that the idea of continuousness, or the exer- 
cise of power transmitted through matter from the first beginning, or 
the continuous extension of working and action of such supposed first cause 
is equivalent to the idea of omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, is 
surely almost an insult to the understanding. Ought not those who care to 
acknowledge such newly-invented first cause, and those who foolishly try to 
force on themselves and others the acceptance of the proposition that the 
views impugned are not atheistic, or only in a very slight degree atheistic, 
to accurately define the powers and attributes of the God they would 
substitute for the God in whom men have hitherto believed 1 If this were 
done, we should be able to judge whether it was possible for men in their 
senses to acknowledge such a power, to submit themselves to its guidance, 
to love, honour, and obey it, to worship it, for the God of man demands 
all this and more. Judging from much that has been said and written upon 
this subject during the last few years, it is difficult to come to any other 
conclusion than that the real aim of many who speak and write in favour of 
,the new views is to destroy, and within a measurable period of time, belief 
in the existence of the Supreme Being, in Providence, and in a living God, 
and to force those who think at all to endeavour, by the mightiest mental 
effort of which they are capable, to train and exercise their minds by the 
contemplation of an everlasting infinite nothing. Instead of the new 
doctrines being explained in detail, we are assured by patronisers and pro- 
moters of this retrograde nonsense that the reasonings of So-and-so, who 
has, in fact, done what he could to prove there is no God, “ are inspired by 
a reverence which is truly religious,” and so on, until every one capable of 
thinking must feel weary of such mawkish adulation and misrepresentation 
of fact. Of course, the real question is whether, in such a system as has 
been proposed, any power deserving the name of God is required or could 
possibly find a place, and then what powers the Deity permitted to exist 
possesses. A God without will, without power to arrange, order, design 
according as he wills, can hardly be worshipped by man. For, can 
omnipotence restricted in its operation by inexorable laws be omnipo- 
tent ? Is not the idea of omnipotence and omniscience, testing by experi- 
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