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and a capacity for worship. Now the introduction of that first man with 
those faculties so different from those of every previous ape made him a 
different being. Some of these scientific gentlemen take up fossils and say, 
“We know such things have happened because we have existing attestations 
of the fact but I say there is something which man has which no ape has 
ever had, the idea of God ; and, with Coleridge, I ask, How did the atheist 
get his idea of that God whose existence he denies ? A man may deny it 
till doomsday, but he cannot account for the fact that the idea is possessed 
by all men. Assertions have been made that some men have been known to 
be bereft of that idea, but if that is so the very exception would prove the 
rule that all men have an instinctive idea of God and an idea of infinity, 
although the wonderful thing is that they are not capable of fully grasping 
either truth. 
Mr. Reddie. — It is a misfortune that you have not read the paper. Your 
words, though very interesting, are really thrown away. Let me quote one 
sentence from Bishop Berkeley which I have given in my paper : — 
“ I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can appre- 
hend either by sense or reflection.” 
I have shown where Berkeley’s view is not tenable. 
Mr. Wainwright.— Well, I only wished as briefly as I could to draw 
attention to the fact that we have proofs of the existence of God, although I 
cannot say that they are mathematical proofs, but they are none the less real 
for all that. 
The Chairman.— The question seems to me to narrow itself to as small a 
point as possible in the following : Can we find any argument from nature 
to meet those who deny design ? If Darwin, for instance, denies design, 
the best way for us to act is not to bring forward an abundance of argument 
which will be satisfactory to ourselves, but when we come to Darwin and 
others who simply say, “ We believe these things have come through evo- 
lution or development without design,” our best course is to endeavour to 
trace out how that idea has originated in their minds, in order that we may 
the more effectually try and meet it, as it were, on their own grounds. The 
idea of natural selection, no doubt, first arose from the breeding and cul- 
tivating of animals and plants. It is well known that by careful selection 
among animals and plants you may produce results differing veiy much from 
the originals. Darwin gives the example of pigeons, and says that the 
original rock pigeons seem to have so far disappeared that scientific orni- 
thologists would at once pronounce many of their present descendants to be 
of distinct genera. Well, the idea of evolution thus gained from that and 
ot ler stocks Mr. Darwin applies to all nature, and assumes that there is 
a great and independent power of natural selection, and that all creation 
las been evolved gradually by law, but without design. Here we join issue, 
f the Deity is to be excluded at all, He must be excluded from everything ; 
ut we cannot help asking, how is the instinct implanted in the bee to make 
his cell in the manner in which he does make it, unless it be by design l 
