The author in reality has no method, but he begins by attempting to prove the being of God, then the existence of mind in man, and the reality of knowledge, and finally, in the second part, that the life of Christ was the life of a real personage, and proves the reality of his religion. He offers only one argument to prove that God is, and that is the well-known argument from design, which he bases on the principle that every effect has its cause. He does not develop this argument, which has been so fully done by Paley and the _Bridgewater Treatises_, but simply asserts its sufficiency. There are marks of design in adapting one thing to another throughout the universe, which can be only the effect of the action of an intelligent designer. Giving this argument all possible force, it does not carry the author in his conclusion beyond Plato or Aristotle, neither of whom was properly a theist. Plato and Aristotle both believed in an intelligent mind in the universe, operating on an eternal uncreated matter, forming all things from pre-existing materials, and arranging them in an artistic order. The argument from design can go no farther, and this is all that is proved by Paley’s illustration of the watch, which 5 would be no illustration at all to a mind that had no intuition or conception of a designer. Neither Plato nor Aristotle had any conception of a creator or supermundane God. Whether the intelligent mind has created all things from nothing, or has only formed and disposed all things from pre-existing matter, as the soul of the world, _anima mundi_, is what can never be determined by any induction from the alleged marks of design discoverable in the universe. We therefore hold, and have always held, that this famous argument, the only one the Baconian philosophy admits, however valuable it may be in proving or illustrating the attributes or perfections of God, when God is once known to exist, is inconclusive when relied on alone to prove that God is, or is that by which the mind first obtains the idea. It may serve as a corroborative argument, but of itself alone it cannot originate the idea in the mind, or carry one beyond an intelligent soul of the world, or the pantheism of Plato and Aristotle, and of all Gentile philosophy, except the school of Leucippus and Democritus, followed as to physics by Epicurus--unless we must also except the sceptics, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. We think, therefore, the author has damaged the cause of Christianity, instead of serving it, by risking it on a single argument, by no means conclusive to his purpose. A weak and inadequate defence is worse than no defence at all.