Our minds being endowed with this principle, we find the world around us to be a succession of changes which we trace back to preceding causes, until we come to the grand question, “Who, or what first started this vast system of successive changes?” Only two replies are conceivable. The first is that of the Atheist, who, contradicting his own common sense, maintains that, in some past period, all this vast system of organization and changes began to exist without any cause. The other reply is, that there is a great, eternal, self‐existent _First Cause_, who himself never began to be, and who is the author of all finite existences. This being, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, we call God. The next principle of common sense is that by which we gain a knowledge of the natural attributes of the Creator. It is this: _Design_ or _contrivance_ to secure a given end, is proof of an _intelligent_ designer, and the _nature_ of a design proves the intention and character of its author. The mind, as has been shown, is so formed that it can not believe that any existence can commence without some antecedent cause. The existence of _unorganized_ matter, however, would be no proof that the cause was an _intelligent mind_. But when any existence is discovered where there is an adjustment of parts, all conducing to accomplish some determinate end, no person can examine and understand its nature and adaptations without the accompanying belief that the cause of that contrivance was a mind endowed with the capacity of adjusting means to accomplish an end, and thus an _intelligent_ mind. Nor is it possible, when the object which any design is fitted to accomplish is clearly discovered, to doubt the _intention_ of the designer. We can not help believing that it was the intention of the contriver to accomplish the end for which his contrivance is fitted. As an example to illustrate the existence of these principles, even in the simplest minds, if a savage should find in the desert a gold watch, nothing could lead him to believe that it sprang into existence there without any cause. If he should open it and perceive the nice adjustment of the wheels and all its beautiful indications of contrivance, he could not believe that the mind of an animal, or that any but an intelligent mind constructed its machinery. If he should have all its movements explained to him, and learn how exactly all were fitted to mark the passage of time, it would be equally impossible to convince him that the contriver did not design it for such a purpose.