consequences" put by an author into the mouth of his adversaries, I, for one, have no confidence whatever. To draw such inferences and glory in their wrong-headedness, is like inventing both sides of a controversial dialogue, defeating the party destined to defeat, and then laying claim to a philosophic victory. Or, we may take the reverse supposition. A writer is too honest for such ill-gotten triumph. This same quality of candour will, most probably, induce him to put the case he opposes in a light so advantageous, as to throw fresh doubt upon his own.

If, then, I have erred in over-quoting upon these accounts, I cannot plead that the error is committed unadvisedly.

It seems right to say, that, in mustering auxiliaries, I found the best friends to my argument were the most truly philosophic Biologists. It would indeed be strange and sad, should the genuine leaders of thought in any among the Natural Sciences be reckoned real adversaries of Natural Theology. But, in order to convey an exact impression to the reader's mind, I must beg him to peruse, in connection with this statement, the note on Materialism appended to Chapter III.; and, more particularly, its concluding pages. Towards the hybrid class mentioned p. 246, I cannot help entertaining a sentiment the reverse of complimentary.

To several distinguished persons who have bestowed upon this undertaking the aids of advice or sympathy, I offer a tribute of respectful gratitude. In one particular they will, I hope, think their kindness not utterly thrown away; since, unlike many recipients of good counsel, I have followed the opinions given me. It is with a deep solemnity of emotion, I thus venture on recording my heartfelt indebtedness. One, who was glad that words of his had helped me, now adorns no longer the noblest of assemblies by his eloquence. To my personal sorrow, he will not cast a glance on the pages over which his favour threw a ray of encouragement.

That same last change, O half-sceptical yet whole-earnest Reader, awaits both thee and myself. To thee, I am no more than the unseen utterer of certain thoughts, nourished through a period of blended hope and anxiety. It is now thine, to take unto thyself such reasonings as may fairly lay claim to some serious consideration. It is mine to accept the mixed consequences of their utterance;—the kindness and contempt which follow believing advocacy always. Through all, and above all, there will remain with me—and perchance with thee also—the sense of a new Responsibility.

These two shares in this slight book on the largest of subjects, belong in a fashion to earnest reader and anxious author for the time present. Soon they will be ours, and not ours. As days pass by, thought and utterance will bring less to both of us. We shall both have tinctured our lives more deeply with the Divine, or the Not-Divine; we shall both have sealed the secret fountains of our hearts, in readiness for the Grave and its inevitable Futurities.

⁂"Natural Theology attempts to demonstrate the existence of a personal First Cause, supreme Reason, and Will. The relations of mankind towards such a Being, are called natural religion.

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We look upon the starry heavens and say, as man creates within his own soul, and gives to airy nothing a thought, a name, a purpose, and a reality, so Almighty God created the Divine poem of this universal frame; His will is its substance, His majestic thought and purpose shine out in its adornment, and we—we are hidden in the hollow of His hand. Every marvel of the visible raises our sense of the infinite variety and beauty of the invisible, until, attracted by Him Who is the first mover of the outward and the inward alike, we make of this wonderful orb we tread upon a solid ground of support from which to mount, to fly to God and be at rest."

These paragraphs are taken from the Appendix to my little volume on Natural Theology alluded to in the beginning of this Preface. They were intended as comments on the words with which the Sermon itself concluded:—

"I have only to add that time could not permit my carrying this fruitful subject beyond its obscure and dry first principles. There is a brighter district of thought, an upland territory, as it were, rising towards our highest inheritance; a border country where Natural Theology melts into Spiritual Religion, and where the true offspring of God learn the lineaments of their Father's divine love. I turn with regret from this land of living light."

Such, then, were the feelings with which I could not help regarding the scientific limits of Natural Theology. I felt it nothing less than a disappointment to traverse the paths of positive fact and argument, and to close just at the very point where the human head gains a response from the human heart. It seemed like the task of a landscape painter, who, after depicting successive plains made shadowy by tangled brushwood and dark forest-growth, should be compelled to lay down his pencil, and forbear transferring to his canvas the beautiful downs and sun-lighted hills overlooking those more obscure regions. Compared with the painter's regrets, were mine, I asked, less natural? The attributes of Deity already dwelt upon through the chain of my argument, were not only fitted to bring His existence home to Reason, but also to move earnest spirits by a strong sense of elevated hopes and duties, devotion and aspiration. These religious sentiments might have yielded the purest lights of my landscape. All that had gone before seemed more negative than affirmative;—rather to have been sketched in neutral tints than in radiant and glowing colours.

A similar feeling of deep concern attended the conclusion of the present Essay; increased by an inevitable thought that the reiterated disappointment seemed likely to be a disappointment always. It was, therefore, a very great gratification to find in the honour of an election to the Bampton Lectureship for 1875, the possibility of adding a crown and completion to all my foregone work. The scheme of these Lectures enables me to treat of Natural Religion; to penetrate the upland territory, the border country where Man may view, as he walks heavenwards, the lineaments of his Father's Divine love.

Before this time next year, I may, therefore, hope to have realized my purpose. The volume of Bampton Lectures for 1875, may then have become the appropriate conclusion of this present book.

    Oxford,
      Nov., 1874.

CONTENTS.