I do not insist upon the truth of these views. All I would urge is, that they have at least a better right to acceptance than the theory of immediate divine action. I would I would urge that this referring of inexplicable facts to such action has been shown to be mistaken innumerable times. The progress of physical science has been continually exposing such errors. There was a time when men saw in the motions of the sun and moon, in the winds, lightnings, pestilence, eclipse-nay, almost every phenomenon of nature-the working not of law but of some personal agent.1 Even so great a natural philosopher as Sir Isaac Newton gave a striking example of this propensity.

By his theory of gravitation he explained generally the motions of the heavenly bodies; but he perceived that there would be upon his principles certain small disturbances and irregularities,2 arising from the fact that the planets would attract one another even as the sun attracted them, though in far less degree. He thought that these disturbances would accumulate, and in time destroy our system. He did not fall back on the idea that there might be

1 Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' chaps. xv., xvi., xvii.

2 Sir Isaac Newton's works edited by Dr. Horsley, London, 1782, vol. iv. p. 262, 3rd book of 'Optics.' Newton's words are: 'For while comets move in very excentric orbits in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move in one and the same way in orbits concentric, some considerable irregularities excepted, which may have arisen from the mutual actions of the comets and planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase till the system wants a reform.'

some provision in nature against this result, which his investigations had not been minute enough to detect, but he conjectured that the Almighty would, when the necessity arose, personally interfere and rectify the disorder. But the more complete and profound investigations of later astronomers, who have adopted his theory and worked it out, have shown that his apprehensions were groundless. Our solar system is so constructed that the disturbances, whose existence Newton rightly conjectured, do not tend permanently to accumulate. They only grow to a certain extent, then wane, and so run through successive cycles. There is no need, at all events, from this cause, of miraculous intervention to preserve the system. Still, this last idea keeps its ground. Even till our own day it was very generally thought that the origin of the different species of plants and animals could be explained only in this The great geologist 2 who has just been taken from amongst us gave a fine example of scientific candour when he recanted that opinion. We have witnessed also a similar change of opinion as to the origin of human speech and civilisation. Surely, with all these examples before us, we should not be

way.

1 See Pratt's Mechanical Philosophy,' Art. 379-383.

2 Sir C. Lyell.

3 See Prof. Max Müller's 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' Sir J. Lubbock's 'Origin of Civilisation.'

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in haste to affirm the impossibility of natural explanation or the need of personal divine intervention.

These remarks apply to every case in which, because our natural philosophy is at fault, we fall back upon the Deus ex machina. The controversy as to the first origin of life affords another instance. Here, too, a theological conclusion has been drawn. If life, we are told, can in a natural way only originate from life, then, since we know that it did not exist on our planet at a remote period of her history, we have proof, even accepting the theory of development, that it must originally have been introduced here in some supernatural way. In the first place, I would refer to the explanation proposed by Thomson and Helmholtz, viz. the possible introduction of life upon our globe by the presence of a germ of life in one of the innumerable meteors which fall upon it. I allow the difficulty attending this theory, on account of the extremes of temperature to which such a body must have been exposed. But I do not see that it is absolutely incredible, and, if admitted, it may put back the origin of life indefinitely. In any case, I would again recur to the idea sanctioned by Prof. Huxley,1 if I understand him rightly, that though within our present observation life does never originate with inanimate matter, we are not

1 Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Liverpool, 1870.

therefore positively to conclude that it never has done so in any state of our planet, or still more of the universe at large.

Before leaving this part of my subject, I would observe that my objections are directed against these scientific arguments as first-cause arguments. I do not see that they prove a beginning, and so establish the doctrine of a Creator. I may be reminded that I have been in reality opposing a conjecture to a fact. We cannot at present, I allow, produce with confidence any natural explanation of the primitive character of atoms, or of the origin of life. I meet that fact by the conjecture that we may discover some such explanation hereafter. It is too soon yet to say that there cannot be any such explanation. Now thus to rely on conjecture it may be said is contrary to my own views elsewhere expressed. I reply that the conjecture in question, that of future explanation by law, unlike the conjecture that no world but our own is inhabited, has much to say on its own behalf. It is, indeed, suggested by the whole of the past history of science. I would also observe that these arguments, even if allowed, do never attain the full force of a proof for a first cause. They come short in this respect of what the old cosmological argument professes at least to prove. They only show anomalous causation. Something must have acted not in accordance with known laws. But that something may

have been the end of a series of finite causes. It is not necessarily self-existent. I know that the idea of a will readily arises, but this is really due to another view of the facts that have been before us, that which sees in them ground for the Design argument. Or more probably this idea arises from our thinking of a will as a first cause, a belief which is at least open to question.

To pursue my distinction as to the force of these objections I would further point out that they do not apply to the features in the character or history of the universe that have been under consideration, looked at as evidence of a God, because they show design. If the present order of nature, or, in other words, the code of her laws, has marks of design, as indeed I believe that it has, it does not lose the significance which it has so acquired by being thought of as resulting naturally from some previous order. The difference thus made is only a distinction on which I shall often have occasion to dwell, between purpose accomplished by a plan and by immediate intervention. Nor yet, if the fact that all atoms of hydrogen are alike carries to any mind the conviction of Divine appointment, should it cease to do so if it be shown that this fact also has its place in the orderly scheme of nature. But I must add that the grounds of the Design argument do not seem to me to be strengthened by thus looking back to the properties

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