The attempts to prove the existence of God may be divided into three classes:—1. Those which attempt to prove the objective existence of God from the subjective notion of necessary existence in the human mind, or from the assumed objectivity of space and time, interpreted as the attributes of a necessary substance. 2. Those which “essay to prove the existence of a supreme self-existent cause, from the mere fact of the existence of the world by the application of the principle of causality, starting with the postulate of any single existence whatsoever, the world, or anything in the world, and proceeding to argue backwards or upwards, the existence of one supreme cause is held to be regressive inference from the existence of these effects.” But it is enough to answer to these attempts, that if a supreme existence were so demonstrable, that bare entity would not be identifiable with “God.” “A demonstration of a primitive source of existence is of no formal theological value. It is an absolute zero.” 3. The argument from design, or adaptation, in nature, the fitness of means to an end, implying, it is said, an architect or designer. Or, from the order in the universe, indicating, it is said, an orderer or lawgiver, whose intelligence we thus discern. But this argument is a failure, because from finite instances differing in character it assumes an infinite cause absolutely the same for all. Divine unity, divine personality, are here utterly unproved. “Why should we rest in our inductive inference of one designer from the alleged phenomena of design, when these are claimed to be so varied and so complex?” If the inference from design is to avail at all, it must avail to show that all the phenomena leading to misery and mischief, must have been designed and intended by a being finding pleasure in the production and maintenance of this misery and mischief. If the alleged constructor of the universe is supposed to have designed one beneficent result, must he not equally be supposed to have designed all results? And if the inference of benevolence and goodness be valid for some instances, must not the inference of malevolence and wickedness be equally valid from others? If, too, any inference is to be drawn from the illustration of organs in animals supposed to be specially contrived for certain results, what is the inference to be drawn from the many abortive and incomplete organs, muscles, nerves, etc., now known to be traceable in man and other animals? What inference is to be drawn from each instance of deformity or malformation? But the argument from design, if it proved anything, would at the most only prove an arranger of pre-existing material; it in no sense leads to the conception of an originator of substance.