But--and it brings me to the last step of my argument--if I accept the theory of the universe propounded by these writers, not only am I left without any such approximate solutions, or, if that be thought too strong a term, without any such alleviations, but all the difficulties as regards the character, attributes, and administration of God, are increased a thousand-fold. The Scripture account of the "fall,"--however inexplicable it may be that God should have permitted it,--yet does expressly assert that, somehow or other, it is man's fault, not God's; that man is not in his normal condition, nor in the condition for which he was created. Dark as are the clouds which envelop the Divine Ruler, "their skirts are tinged with gold,"--pervaded and penetrated throughout their dusky depths by that mercy which assures us that, in some intelligible sense, this condition of man is contrary to the Divine Will, which, from the first, resolved to remedy it; and that a day is coming when what is mysterious shall be explained,--so far, at least, that what has been "wrong" shall be "righted." But what is the theory of the universe propounded by these writers? So hideous (I solemnly declare it) that I feel ten times more compelled to reject the universe as a work of an infinitely gracious, wise, and powerful Creator, than if the difficulties had been simply left where the Bible leaves them. According to their theory, man is now, just what he was at first,--as he came from his Creator's hand; or rather in some parts of the world (thanks to himself though) a little better than he was originally; that God cast man forth, so constituted by the unhappy mal-admixture of the elements of his nature,--with such an inevitable subjection of the "idea" to the "conception," of the "spiritual faculty" to "the degraded types,"--that for unnumbered ages--for aught we know, myriads of ages--man has been slowly crawling up, a very sloth in "progress" (poor beast!), from the lowest Fetichism to Polytheism,--from Polytheism, in all its infinitude of degrading forms, to imperfect forms of Monotheism; and how small a portion of the race have even imperfectly reached this last term, let the spectacle of the world's religions at the present moment proclaim! From the more imperfect forms of Monotheism, the race is gradually to make "progress" to something else,--Heaven knows what! but certainly something still far below the horizon,--still concealed in the illimitable future. For this gradual transformation from the veriest religions grub into the spiritual Psyche, man was expressly equipped by the constitution of his nature,--he was created this grub. For all this truly geological spiritualism, and for all the infinitude of hideous superstitions and cruel wrongs involved in the course of this precious development, Mr. Parker tells us there was a necessity,--nothing less! It was necessary, no doubt for his logic,