CONCLUSIONS. These, then, are the difficulties created by the doctrine of Evolution. They are difficulties which appear completely to impugn the very nature of God, the veracity of the Bible, and the dogmas of sin and its atonement. We have already seen, by our study of Bible criticism and comparative mythology, how grave are the grounds for distrusting the Faith, and Evolution seems to be just the finishing stroke that was required for confirming our suspicions. We must now see whether there are any other arguments for belief of sufficient weight to warrant us in over-stepping the boundaries of reason by an act of faith. THEISM Chapter VI. THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS § 1. Preliminary Remarks. Our next task is to study the arguments for theism. Under these may be ranged--the cosmological argument, which concludes that there must be one eternal, unconditioned, self-existent cause; the teleological [190] argument, which concludes that nature's first cause must be an intelligence; and the ethical argument--the proof from the moral order and conscience--which concludes that the supreme intelligence must be a moral, a beneficent being. To these may be added the argument from religious experience. THEISM, AND WHO ARE THEISTS. First a word about theism. Theism is belief in the existence of a God as the creator and ruler of the universe. It assumes a living relation of God to his creatures, but does not define it. Although Theos and Deus are equivalent, theism has come to be distinguished from deism. The latter, according to some theologians, while equally opposed to atheism, denies or ignores the personality of God, and therefore denies [191] Christianity. Theism, on the contrary, underlies Christianity. Accordingly, in considering the truth or untruth of Christianity, we are concerned only with theism. However, it should be borne in mind that, although a man cannot be a Christian without being a Theist, he may be, and very often is in these days, a Theist without being a Christian. Of the cultured men who think they can still lay claim to the name of Christian, the bulk are, in point of fact, non-Christian Theists. Some of these quiet their conscience by the thought that they are still preserving a "reverent agnosticism" with regard to Christian dogmas; while certain anti-Haeckelites of the type of Professor E. Armitage (who urges scientific men to "remember that we only know appearances, and that whenever we affirm anything about what lies behind appearances we are making hazardous inferences" [192]) do not seem to be aware that they are adherents of one of the fundamental principles of agnosticism.