If order, harmony, and adaptation exist, which were not produced by design, which are therefore not evidence of design, it is unreasonable and illogical to infer designing intelligence from the fact alone that order, harmony, and adaptation exist in nature. Therefore an intelligent Deity cannot be inferred from the order, harmony, and adaptation in nature. If the order, harmony, and adaptation in Deity, to produce his thoughts, and to execute his plans, are eternal, why may not the formation of matter into worlds, and the evolutions of the various forms of vegetable and animal life on this globe be the result of the ceaseless action of self-existent matter in accordance with an inherent eternal principle of adaptation? Is it more reasonable to suppose the universe was created, or constructed by a being in whom exists the most wonderful order and harmony, and the most admirable adaptation to construct a universe (which order, harmony, and adaptation could have had no designing cause), than to suppose that the universe itself in its entirety is eternal, and the self-producing cause of all the manifestations we behold? Is a God uncaused, and who made everything from nothing, more easy of belief than a universe uncaused and existing according to its own inherent nature? Is it wonderful that matter should be self-existent; that it should possess the power to form suns, planets, and construct that beautiful ladder of life that reaches from the lowest forms of the vegetable kingdom up to man? How much more wonderful that a great being should exist, without any cause, who had no beginning, and who is infinitely more admirable than the universe itself.