means to attain it, and
authoritative enforcement of the use of those means by a lawgiver. Are
the laws of nature laws given by some supposed intelligent being,
worshiped by the heathen of old, and by the atheists of modern times,
under that name? Or do they signify the orderly and regular sequence of
cause and effect, which is so manifest in the course of all events? If,
as atheists say, the latter, this is the very thing we want them to
account for. How came the world to be under law without a lawgiver?
Where there is law, there must be design. Chance is utterly inconsistent
with the idea of law. Where there is design there must, of necessity, be
a designer. Matter in any shape, stones or lightnings, mud or magnets,
can not think, contrive, design, give law to itself, or to any thing
else, much less bring itself into existence. There is no conceivable way
of accounting for this orderly world we live in but one or other of
these two: Either an intelligent being created the world, or--_the
paving stones made themselves_.

"Here are two hypotheses, of which the oldest is admitted to offer a
full and consistent explanation of all the facts of science. There can
be no better cause for any given formation than that God created it so.
Men of science, however, allege that creation (out of nothing) is
'scientifically inconceivable;' but this is only throwing dust in our
eyes; of course, science can not _verify_ it, neither can it verify any
other theory of causation. The question is whether reason can accept the
fact, though science can not even imagine the process? If not, there is
nothing for us but the _eternity of matter_, for evolution itself has to
face the very same difficulty when asked to account for its primal germ.
It is surely more conceivable that God created the first matter out of
nothing, than that nothing evolved something out of itself, by an
imminent law of its nature. This point, however, our scientific men are
sadly given to shirking. They profess in general not to hold the
eternity of matter, but they have nothing to suggest for its origin.
They accept it as the starting point of evolution, and decline to
speculate on its cause. This, as Dr. Christlieb observes of Bauer's
kindred system of criticism, is 'beginning without a
beginning--everything is already extant'. We may as well start with
species, as with protoplasm, if the inquiry is not to be pushed beyond
the fact. The evolutionist is bound to answe