To these philosophers Voltaire's unshaken theism seemed a mere bit of eccentric conservatism. But along with that queer and intensely independent personality there went a stronger intellectual grasp and a more calm intellectual vision than belonged to any other Frenchman of the eighteenth century. In the facts of Nature, despite the lifeless piecemeal fashion in which they were then studied, Voltaire saw a rational principle at work which atheism could in nowise account for. To him the universe seemed full of evidences of beneficent purpose, and more than once he set forth with eloquence and power the famous argument from design, which is as old as Xenophon's Memorabilia, and which received its fullest development at the hands of Paley and the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises. There is thus yet another significance added to the little church at Ferney. Not only was it the sole church in France dedicated simply to God, and not only was its builder a layman hostile to ecclesiastical doctrines and methods, but he was almost alone among the eminent freethinkers of his age and country in believing in God and asserting the everlasting reality of religion. It is therefore that I have cited Voltaire as a kind of text for the present discourse; for it is my purpose to show that, apart from all questions of revelation, the light of nature affords us sufficient ground for maintaining that religion is fundamentally true and must endure forever. It appears to me, moreover, that the materialism of the present day is merely a tradition handed down from the French writers whom Voltaire combated. When Moleschott made his silly remark about phosphorus, it was simply an inheritance of silliness from Lalande. When Haeckel tells us that the doctrine of evolution forbids us to believe in a future life, it is not because he has rationally deduced such a conclusion from the doctrine, but because he takes his opinions on such matters ready-made from Ludwig Büchner, who is simply an echo of the eighteenth century atheist La Mettrie. We shall see that the doctrine of evolution has implications very different from what Haeckel supposes.