THE THEISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD. _AN ESSAY IN OPPOSITION TO CERTAIN TENDENCIES OF MODERN THOUGHT._ BY B. F. COCKER, D.D., LL.D., PROFESSOR OF MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN; AUTHOR OF "CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY." "Science discloses the method of the world, but not its cause; Religion, its cause, but not its method."--MARTINEAU. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. The present volume was announced in the preface to "Christianity and Greek Philosophy" as nearly ready for publication under the title of "Christianity and Modern Thought." Several considerations have induced the author to delay its appearance, the most influential of which has been the desire to await the culmination among a class of self-styled "advanced thinkers" of what they have been pleased to call "the tendency of modern thought." No extraordinary sagacity was needed to foresee the issue, or to predict that it must soon be reached. The transition has been rapid from negative criticism of the Christian religion to direct assault upon the very foundation of all religion--the personality and providence of God. Distrust of a supernatural revelation, and denial of all authority to the teaching of the sacred Scriptures, has been succeeded by doubt of the existence of God in the proper import of that sacred name. The Theistic postulate is degraded to the rank of a mere hypothesis, which is pronounced inadequate to explain the universe. A "law-governed Cosmos, full of life and reason," eternal and infinite, must now take the place of a personal God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. This is the "New Faith" which is to supersede the Old.