WESLEY COLLEGE, SHEFFIELD, _September 1, 1887_. THE CREATOR, AND WHAT WE MAY KNOW OF THE METHOD OF CREATION. In spite of the lucid and far-reaching reasoning of Hume, which aimed at effacing causality from our conceptions of phenomena, and making invariable sequence supplant it; in spite of Auguste Comte’s stern effort to ‘get rid of the vain pretension to investigate the causes of phenomena,’ and the affirmation that ‘forces are only movements, produced or tending to produce;’ nay, in spite of all the logical effort of all the following years, there remains unaltered, that inalienable property of the human mind, consciousness of power; the ability to realize ‘I can’ simultaneously with ‘I am.’ In this originates our universal explanation of external phenomena. Because we can act and produce phenomena, we infer that all phenomena were inevitably produced by some transcendent but equivalent act of conscious power. If we think of a plane surface or a sphere, we can only think of them as occupants of space: so, if we think of the light beams of Sirius, or the motion of Mars, we realize the normal necessity of thinking of them ultimately as caused. This is an inevitable sequence of our consciousness, reason, and experience. A phenomenon appearing in time evokes the mental demand for something which is not that phenomenon, but without which it would not have existed. In this lies the insatiable desire of mind to peer into the origin of, and reason for, the existence of this universe. Deepening knowledge brings broader light and expanding mystery, but this only quickens the intellectual purpose of the race to seek to solve the problem, why we are circled with the splendid phenomena of heaven and earth, and possessed of the mystery of ourselves?