of man unfolded in history a succession, a plan, a development, which cannot be referred to man himself. Some, despairing from the outset to find a solution, make of their ignorance a blind power which they call hazard. Evidently that is no solution. Hazard is a word, and nothing more. Other writers--the majority of writers--say that this mysterious power is nature, under the form of climate, or races, or the whole of the physical influences which act on the moral world. But what is nature? Whence has it this power, this foresight, this intelligence, which are so conspicuous in the course of our destinies? If nature is matter, and nothing but matter, that too is no answer. Who will believe that matter acts with wisdom--with intelligence? Where there is intelligent action there must be an intelligent being; therefore nature leads us to God. Finally, there are those who substitute for nature general laws. But do not laws suppose a legislator? and who can this legislator be, if not God?"[28] [28] See Appendix XX. There is, then, everywhere, both in the physical and moral worlds, order and adaptation, proportion and co-ordination, and there is very widely present progress--order which advances in a certain direction to a certain end, which is until realised only an ideal. This is the state of things which science discloses. The question is, Is this state of things intelligible on any other supposition than that of a designing mind? The theist holds that it is not; that it directly and imperatively demands an intelligent cause; that to assign it either to no cause, or to any other than an intelligent cause, is, in the strictest and strongest sense of the term, absurd. If we deny that there is such order as I have indicated, we set aside the entire teaching of all the sciences--we pronounce science to be from beginning to end a delusion and a lie. Men in the present day dare not do this. If we deny that such order implies the agency of a Supreme Intelligence, we contradict no express declaration of any of the sciences; we may accept all that they have to tell us about order, and they can tell us about nothing else. But notwithstanding this, it is far more reasonable, far less absurd, to deny that there is order in the universe, than to admit it and deny that its ultimate cause is an intelligence. Further, although we cannot be more certain of the cause than of the effect from which it is inferred, and consequently cannot be more certain that an intelligence has produced the order which is in the universe than that there is order therein, the theistic inference from the whole of that order may well be greatly stronger than the scientific proof of order in any particular instance. Men of science have probably never as good reasons for believing in the laws of order brought to light by their own special science, as the theist has for believing in a Supreme Intelligence because of the order which is the