Many of our critics seem to fancy that we presume to attempt such an absurdity as a demonstration of Christian truth from a mere physical basis! We simply confute those who (in the outraged name of science) have asserted that science is incompatible with religion. Surely it is not _we_ who are dogmatists, but those who assert that the principles and well-ascertained conclusions of science are antagonistic to Christianity and immortality. If in the course of our discussion we are to some extent constructors, and find analogies in nature which seem to us to throw light upon the doctrines of Christianity, yet in the main our object is rather to break down unfounded objections than to construct apologetic arguments. These we leave to the Theologian. The Bishop of Manchester has very clearly described our position by stating that [_from a purely physical point of view_, § 204] we ‘contend for the possibility of immortality and of a personal God.’ To vary the metaphor, we have merely stripped off the hideous mask with which materialism has covered the face of nature to find underneath (what every one with faith in anything at all must expect to find) something of surpassing beauty, but yet of inscrutable depth. For indeed we are entire believers in the infinite depth of nature, and hold that just as we must imagine space and duration to be infinite, so must we imagine the structural complexity of the universe to be infinite also. To our minds it appears no less false to pronounce eternal _that aggregation we call the atom_, than it would be to pronounce eternal _that aggregation we call the Sun_. All this follows from the principle of Continuity, in virtue of which we make scientific progress in the knowledge of things, and which leads us, whatever state of things we contemplate, to look for its antecedent in some previous state of things also in the Universe. This principle represents the path from the known to the unknown, or to speak more precisely, our conviction that there is a path. Nevertheless it does not authorise us to dogmatise regarding the properties of the unknown lying beyond or at the boundary of our little ‘clearing.’ We must go up to it and examine it often, with long continued labour, under great difficulties, before we can at all say what its properties are. Among those who recognise us as orthodox, and for that reason attack us, there is one of deservedly high authority. Our ‘brother,’ Professor W. K. Clifford, has published a lively attack on our speculations in a recent number of the _Fortnightly Review_. We are bound respectfully to consider the arguments of an adversary of his calibre.