We find as a matter of fact that this hope is no stranger to the human breast; that numbers live in it; numbers have died for it; and pre-eminently those of whom the world was not worthy. The growth of thought from a bare idea of the Supernatural to a belief in a pure and sublime Theism,--and the sufficient account it renders of the world, ourselves, and our destinies, must be looked upon as matters of fact in the work-day history of mankind. Practical human reason has really travelled by this track, and, from day to day, perceives new truths to verify the old conclusion. Every attempt to adapt other theories to the working facts become, by their unfitness for the purpose, indirect evidence for Theism. How short a time has passed since Campbell lamented over-- "The hopeless dark Idolater of Chance;" and since the authors of "Rejected Addresses" ridiculed a system which made the universe an accident.[170]--_Now_, chance sounds as strangely in scientific ears as Fate did to our strong-willed forefathers. Next, came that unintelligible contradictory phrase, a "_blind intelligence_;" a thing called a _mind_, that goes it knows not whither, and moves it knows not why. From this thing, immersed in the darkest ignorance, and unconscious even of its own existence, we were asked to believe that arrangement, harmony, excellence, beauty, were the productions. No wonder if men soon concluded that a moving force,--material and soulless,--would equally fulfil the same exalted functions. And, surely, one _thing_ is an account of the Universe as reasonable and as sufficient as the other. If we place a non-theistic theory in relation to our human inner nature, there ensues the same monstrous incongruity. The plenitude of loveliness, which overflows creation, as it were with multitudinous waves of light, we are asked to think of as the work of blind non-being. But, there is a greater plenitude of loveliness, in the good and noble acts, words, and thoughts of one bright soul of heaven-aspiring Man. Must we, then, believe that truth, sincerity, justice, rightness, goodness, purity, are all the offspring of a something infinitely lower than our weakest human will?[171]--Is that unknown something to be also the beacon of our hopes, the refuge of each forlorn and shipwrecked brother, the happiness giving itself to satisfy the unsatisfied aspirations of our long-enduring hearts?