That same last change, O half-sceptical yet whole-earnest Reader, awaits both thee and myself. To thee, I am no more than the unseen utterer of certain thoughts, nourished through a period of blended hope and anxiety. It is now thine, to take unto thyself such reasonings as may fairly lay claim to some serious consideration. It is mine to accept the mixed consequences of their utterance;--the kindness and contempt which follow believing advocacy always. Through all, and above all, there will remain with me--and perchance with thee also--the sense of a new Responsibility. These two shares in this slight book on the largest of subjects, belong in a fashion to earnest reader and anxious author for the time present. Soon they will be ours, and not ours. As days pass by, thought and utterance will bring less to both of us. We shall both have tinctured our lives more deeply with the Divine, or the Not-Divine; we shall both have sealed the secret fountains of our hearts, in readiness for the Grave and its inevitable Futurities. * * * * * [asterism] "Natural Theology attempts to demonstrate the existence of a personal First Cause, supreme Reason, and Will. The relations of mankind towards such a Being, are called natural religion. * * * * * We look upon the starry heavens and say, _as_ man creates within his own soul, and gives to airy nothing a thought, a name, a purpose, and a reality, _so_ Almighty God created the Divine poem of this universal frame; His will is its substance, His majestic thought and purpose shine out in its adornment, and we--we are hidden in the hollow of His hand. Every marvel of the visible raises our sense of the infinite variety and beauty of the invisible, until, attracted by Him Who is the first mover of the outward and the inward alike, we make of this wonderful orb we tread upon a solid ground of support from which to mount, to fly to God and be at rest." These paragraphs are taken from the Appendix to my little volume on Natural Theology alluded to in the beginning of this Preface. They were intended as comments on the words with which the Sermon itself concluded:-- "I have only to add that time could not permit my carrying this fruitful subject beyond its obscure and dry first principles. There is a brighter district of thought, an upland territory, as it were, rising towards our highest inheritance; a border country where Natural Theology melts into Spiritual Religion, and where the true offspring of God learn the lineaments of their Father's divine love. I turn with regret from this land of living light."