tions by saying that I think it is a melancholy exhibition of the human 
mind that, after the magnificent Bridgewater treatises whic we ^ awe a 
show the skill and wisdom and design of our great Create, modernsce^ 
should raise up a spirit of disbelief, reversing the decrsions of tho^a tls es 
and venturing in its puny strength to deny the existence of a Creator. At 
the same time we must all agree that, apart from divine reve ^ 
existence of God is not capable of any demonstraUon winch has that d gr 
of certainty which attends a demonstration in mathematical smence. i 
L only be an approach to a proof from design and moral evidence I 
would put it in this way : we have ground for believing t at 1 is ™ 
cedently probable that there is a God than it is antecedently probable “ 
there should not be, and although the probability is of the very highest 
decree sthth as to amount in its transcendental force almost to a certainty, 
yet it ; t lU tales the natnre of that which Butler calls an 
bilitv I take up a piece of inorganic matter-a piece of sandstone withou 
flaw— and I look J it and ask whence it came. I think we must agree 
that either in some shape or other -either as it now stonds orm 
previous form-it must have existed eternaUy as matter in that ^organic 
I”it must have been created. I am not aw^e that there is any third 
position. Can you say whether there is, Mr. Kow . 
Mr" T^c^B—Well^^^hiorganic matter must have existed eternally 
or H nmstTave been ’created : let us assume that much Now we must . 
-T "‘Vnr We —^roha- 
STSfl po^Uon m o? thelther, to reason in any otHer way «ian hy 
accepting the laws of nature as they stand. The sandstone a _ 
my hand may have been at the bottom of the sea, or it i-y tave passed 
through a thousand changes lasting through cycles of ages of whlct * e 
nothing; but from the first it must have been a piece of •-orgamc mate 
while all these changes have been going on. Now, in ® onsl 
question there are but three suppositions which are open : ta ass 
our starting-point, that there are constant evolutions and <*8 
which shape inorganic matter through successive ages, and l which ^ have 
Thaped all inorganic matter into the form which it bears now. There a e 
See suppositions open to us -these changes and evoluUo- 
been produced by natural or external forces or by both together. There are 
volcanic forces and centrifugal and centripetal forces, an ese 
external forces by which the evolutions of natural substances have been 
ca^d of through past age. Now either those evolutions have been pro- 
gressing from some starting-point— before which there was no sue j- 
the evolutions must themselves have 
are the only two grounds upon which we can argu . pp^ 
