Sec. 29. Had it been my lot to have lived in the last generation, I doubt not that I should have regarded the foregoing considerations as final: I should have concluded that there was an overwhelming balance of rational probability in favour of Theism; and I think I should also have insisted that this balance of rational probability would require to continue as it was till the end of time. I should have maintained, in some such words as the following, in which the Rev. Baden Powell conveys this argument:--"The very essence of the whole argument is the invariable preservation of the principle of _order_: not necessarily such as we can directly recognise, but the universal conviction of the unfailing subordination of everything to _some_ grand principles of _law_, however imperfectly apprehended in our partial conceptions, and the successive subordination of such laws to others of still higher generality, to an extent transcending our conceptions, and constituting the true chain of universal causation which culminates in the sublime conception of the COSMOS. "It is in immediate connection with this enlarged view of universal immutable natural order that I have regarded the narrow notions of those who obscure the sublime prospect by imagining so unworthy an idea as that of occasional interruptions in the physical economy of the world. "The only instance considered was that of the alleged sudden supernatural origination of new species of organised beings in remote geological epochs. It is in relation to the broad principle of law, if once rightly apprehended, that such inferences are seen to be wholly unwarranted by science, and such fancies utterly derogatory and inadmissible in philosophy; while, even in those instances properly understood, the real scientific conclusions of the invariable and indissoluble chain of causation stand vindicated in the sublime contemplations with which they are thus associated. "To a correct apprehension of the whole argument, the one essential requisite is to have obtained a complete and satisfactory grasp of this _one grand principle of law pervading nature, or rather constituting the very idea of nature_;--which forms the vital essence of the whole of inductive science, and the sole assurance of those higher inferences from the inductive study of natural causes which are the vindications of a supreme intelligence and a moral cause. "_The whole of the ensuing discussion must stand or fall with the admission of this grand principle_. Those who are not prepared to embrace it in its full extent may probably not accept the conclusions; but they must be sent back to the school of inductive science, where alone it must be independently imbibed and thoroughly assimilated with the mind of the student in the first instance.