"Yet it is a common mode of illustration to speak of the _chain_ of secondary causes reaching up to the First Cause. Or, again, fears are entertained of tracing secondary causes too far, so as to intrench on the supremacy of the First Cause. But this is an erroneous analogy: the maker or designer of a chain is no more at one end of it than at the other. The length of the chain in no way alters our conviction of its skilful structure, except to enhance it. If the number of links were truly _infinite_, so much the more infinite the skill of its framer. "Mr. F. Newman observes,[69] I think most truly, that the _common_ arguments from what are called 'secondary causes' to the 'First Cause' are unsatisfactory: and I would trace this to the confused sense in which those terms are commonly used, as already explained; and which, I think, might be entirely removed by attention to the distinctions above laid down. While, on the other hand, I fully acknowledge that those arguments, when correctly understood, lead only to a _very limited_ conclusion; and one which falls infinitely _short_ of those high moral and spiritual intuitions on which Mr. F. Newman grounds his religious system, yet in no way discredits or supersedes them." _Essay_, pp. 151-4. _Extract_ No. 2.--"In the present state of knowledge, law and order, physical causation and uniformity of action, are the elevated manifestations of Divinity, creation and providence. Interruptions of such order (if for a moment they could be admitted as such) could only produce a sort of temporary concealment of such manifestations, and involve the beautiful light shed over the natural world in a passing cloud. We do not indeed _doubt_ that the sun exists behind the cloud, but we certainly do not see it; still less can we call the obscuration a special _proof_ of its presence. The main point in the system of order and law is its absolute _universality_. Exceptions, if real, must _pro tanto_ imply a deficiency in the chain of connexion, and might, to a sceptical disposition, offer a ground of doubt. "But so overwhelming is the mass and body of proof, that no philosophic mind would allow such exceptions for a moment to weigh against it; they would be as dust in the balance. A supreme moral cause manifested through law, order, and physical causes, is the confession of science: conflicting operations, arbitrary interruptions, abrupt discontinuities, are the idols of ignorance, and, if they really prevailed, would so far be to the philosopher only the exponents of chaos and atheism; the obscuration (as far as they extend) of the sensible manifestation of the Supreme Intelligence." _Ibid._ 165, 6.