So far as I am aware, the foregoing argument is here advanced for the first time. It does not pretend to meet the requirements of scientific demonstration. One must not look for scientific demonstration in problems that contain so many factors transcending our direct experience. But as an appeal to our common sense, the argument here brought forward surely has tremendous weight. It seems to me far more convincing than any chain of subtle metaphysical reasoning can ever be; for such chains, however, invincible in appearance, are no stronger than the weakest of their links, and in metaphysics one is always uneasily suspecting some undetected flaw. My argument represents the impression that is irresistibly forced upon one by a broad general familiarity with Nature's processes and methods; it therefore belongs to the class of arguments that survive. Observe, too, that it is far from being a modified repetition of the old argument that beliefs universally accepted must be true. Upon the view here presented, every specific opinion ever entertained by man respecting religious things may be wrong, and in all probability is exceedingly crude, and yet the Everlasting Reality of Religion, in its three indispensable elements as here set forth, remains unassailable. Our common-sense argument puts the scientific presumption entirely and decisively on the side of religion and against all atheistic and materialistic explanations of the universe. It establishes harmony between our highest knowledge and our highest aspirations by showing that the latter no less than the former are a normal result of the universal cosmic process. It has nothing to fear from the advance of scientific discovery, for as these things come to be better understood, it is going to be realized that the days of the antagonism between Science and Religion must by and by come to an end. That antagonism has been chiefly due to the fact that religious ideas were until lately allied with the doctrine of special creations. They have therefore needed to be remodelled and considered from new points of view. But we have at length reached a stage where it is becoming daily more and more apparent that with the deeper study of Nature the old strife between faith and knowledge is drawing to a close; and disentangled at last from that ancient slough of despond the Human Mind will breathe a freer air and enjoy a vastly extended horizon. [Illustration] L'ENVOI