Those who, on religious grounds, look with suspicion upon scientific investigation, are frequently influenced by two erroneous notions, closely related to one another, without regard to the well-grounded aversion to the atheistic beauty with which so many scientific works are adorned. One of these errors is the notion that any object is remote from divine causality in the degree in which it has the cause of its origin in the natural connection, and that it would be easier for us to trace the origin of an object to the authorship of God, if we could not find any natural cause of its origin, than if we had knowledge of such a natural cause. The other error is the notion that the idea of "creation" excludes the idea of the action of secondary causes. If the first mentioned opinion were correct, those certainly would be right who identify the progress of sciences with the progress of atheism; and ignorance would then be the most effective protection of piety. But this opinion is in direct conflict with all sound religious and scientific reasoning. It is in conflict with sound religious reasoning: for the religious view of the world sees in nature itself, with its whole association of causes and effects, a work of God; and as certainly as, according to the religious view of nature, a thousand years in the sight of God are but as yesterday when it is past, just so certainly is an object a work of {255} God, whether its origin is due to milliards of _well-known_ secondary causes, which all together are works of God--as well with reference to the laws which they obey as to the materials and forces in which these laws are active--or whether, when treating the question as to the immediate cause of its existence, we see ourselves led to an agency _unknown_ to us. And that opinion is also in conflict with all sound scientific reasoning: for the fact that we do not have any knowledge of the immediate cause of a phenomenon, is by no means a proof that this immediate cause is the direct action of God who does not use any secondary causes; the phenomena may just as well have still more material or immaterial secondary causes, unknown to us. We will illustrate the error, referred to, by an example which will also reveal its relationship to the other error of which we shall have to speak immediately. It is certainly no evidence of an especially intensive piety, if we build the conviction that God is the Creator of man, among other things, on the obscurity in which for us the origin of mankind is wrapped. For from this obscurity no other conclusion can be drawn than increased proofs of the limitation of our knowledge; that piety which traces those phenomena whose natural causes we know, just as decidedly to the causality of God, is much more--we shall not say, intensive, but correctly guided--than that piety which traces back those whose natural causes are hidden to us. And, on the other hand, it is also