85 
sive development can claim no solid foundation in nature to 
rest on, but only the assumed force of negative, that is, ima- 
ginary evidence ; the believer in revelation may well pause 
when asked to make revelation square with theoretical geology. 
He can wish the investigator of geological facts God- speed 
while he investigates the relics of the past, and wait patiently 
the collection and digestion of such a body of facts as may 
render speculation less hazardous than it has hitherto been, in 
attempting to construct the history of the past from the 
records it has left in the earth's strata. 
[When this Paper was read in Sion College, there was introduced at this 
place an argument in favour of the evidences of design to be observed in 
nature, which was omitted in reading the Paper in the Victoria Institute, 
as the omitted passages had been previously delivered in the Institute, in 
Mr. Mitchell’s Inaugural Address. — Vide voL i. of the Journal of Transac- 
tions, pp. 54 to 68.] 
The assertion “that the gradual reduction of all phe- 
nomena within the sphere of established law carries with it 
as a consequence the rejection of the miraculous ” (upon 
which assertion modern rationalism has invaded the domain 
of theology and natural philosophy), has only to be brought 
face to face with the highest inductions of modern science 
to meet its own refutation. We are not required to banish 
God, to banish a Creator from the physical world, to cultivate 
with freedom the revelations of modern science. The assumed 
laws which replace design by rigid fate crumble before a calm 
dispassionate investigation. As men of science we can believe 
not only that God created us ; but we can confess, with heathen 
poets of old, that “we are His offspring,” seeing that “in 
Him we live and move and have our being.” That no disbelief 
in the miraculous, no knowledge of correlation of forces, no 
conservation of vis vitas, compels us to deny that “He left 
not Himself without witness in that He did good, and gave us 
rain from heaven, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” 
Our philosophy still allows us with simple hearts to pray 
“ Give us this day our daily bread.” We can still believe that 
no sparrow can fall to the ground without our heavenly Fathers 
knowledge and will. Nav, the more we know, the more 
deeply we investigate the phenomena of nature, the more are 
we compelled to admit our own ignorance. “ Hardly do we 
guess aright at things that are upon earth, and with labour do 
we find the things that are before us.” Laws of nature, we 
confess with Hooker, have in them “more than men have as 
yet attained to know, or perhaps ever shall attain, seeing the 
travail of wading herein is given of God to the sons of men, 
