e number of subsidiary ends have had to be
attained. These are not merely digestion and brain, but a host of
others: _e.g._, in vertebrates, vertebrae of the right substance,
position, form, arrangement, and union. And in the ascending line,
for whose highest forms it has continually worked, the difficulties
of attaining each subsidiary end have been successively solved, and
through this host of subsidiary ends the animal kingdom has advanced
straight to its goal of intelligence and righteousness. Now the
whole process is a grand argument for design. But I would not
emphasize the process so much as the end attained. This especially,
when attained by conformity to that environment, demands more than
mere mindless atoms in or behind that environment. Can we call the
ultimate power which makes for righteousness "it?" Can we call it
less than "Him, in whom we live and move and have our being?"

The history of life is a grand drama. "Paradise Lost" and
Shakespeare's plays are but fragments of it. But without
intelligence they could never have been composed; without a choice
of means and ends they could never have been placed upon the stage.
Does the plot of this grander drama of evolution demand no
intelligence in its ultimate cause and producer? Is the succession
of steps, each succeeding the other in such order as to lead to
truth and right and continual progress toward a spiritual goal, is
this plot possible without a great composer who has seen the end
from the beginning? Could it ever have been executed upon the stage
of the world, and perhaps of the universe, without an executing
will?

Now I freely grant you that this is no mathematical demonstration.
Natural science does not deal in demonstrations, it rests upon the
doctrine of probabilities; just as we have to order our whole lives
according to this doctrine. Its solution of a problem is never the
only conceivable answer, but the one which best fits and explains
all the facts and meets the fewest objections. The arguments for the
existence of a personal God are far stronger than those in favor of
any theory of evolution. But we very rightly test the former
arguments, indefinitely more rigidly and severely, just because our
very life hangs on them. On the other hand, we should not reject
them as useless, because they are not of an entirely different kind
from those on which all the actions and beliefs of our common daily
life are based. There is a scepticism which