The delays which have befallen these pages since they were first sent to press in the former half of 1873, have caused much regret to both author and publishers. Our troubles began with a singular misadventure to a quantity of MS.; which, together with other circumstances, delayed printing till after the time originally fixed for publication. The next season was lost in consequence of severe domestic affliction. Those of my readers who have ever gone into print, will most readily commiserate the anxiety caused by such unlooked for disappointments. * * * * * The ensuing line of argument was suggested to my mind when a young Oxonian, in consequence of circumstances with which it is needless to trouble my readers. What I then thought its special strength, lay in the point of its combining two totally different kinds of proof:--one, drawn from a survey of the world we live in,--the other, from what is nearer to ourselves--the moral truth given us by our personal consciousness. I also thought that any particular weakness alleged against one proof, could not be incident to the other; and, therefore, that since both lines of evidence, (kept apart while under examination), met at last in one and the same result, my inquiry had arrived at a demonstrably certain conclusion. At the same time, I could not but feel a wholesome distrust of my reasonings on a subject, which, though often discussed, had never, as I then believed, been looked at exactly from my own point of view. Somewhat later in life, I learned from Paley's commentators and continuators, that the attack and defence of Natural Theology had for years been conformed to the position taken up by the Archdeacon, so far at least as the popular science of this country was concerned. But the sceptical tactics of Hume shewed me a much wider plan of assault; and in studying his great German antagonist I saw that a double line of defence had been contemplated by him. I have since observed that no part of Kant's philosophy is less commonly known to English readers than his method and results in those most priceless of his critical investigations, the treatises forming a ground-work of Moral Science. As may at once be supposed, the discovery that I really had a sort of sympathiser in Kant, was the greatest possible encouragement to my mind. Yet there remained a very heavy discouragement. Evidently, any one who should try to pursue two very separate but convergent lines of reasoning, must undergo a most toilsome task, and one little likely to be performed without long and continued effort. And, harder yet to answer was the question next following: Who will read your patiently obtained results, to say nothing of the collateral topics which must in logical fairness be argued by the way? After all, the inevitable drawback to Natural Theology lies in the fact that, in order to be held a valid science, it must necessarily become a complex one.