ught. The old Jews put a God into
Nature, and therefore of course they could see, as you see, what
they had already put there. But we see no God in Nature. We do not
deny the existence of a God; we merely say that scientific research
does not reveal Him to us. We see no marks of design in physical
phenomena. What used to be considered as marks of design can be
better explained by considering them as the results of evolution
according to necessary laws; and you and Scripture make a mere
assumption when you ascribe them to the operation of a mind like the
human mind.

Now, on this point I believe we may answer fearlessly: If you
cannot see it we cannot help you. If the heavens do not declare to
you the glory of God, nor the firmament show you His handy-work,
then our poor arguments about them will not show it. "The eye can
only see that which it brings with it the power of seeing." We can
only reassert that we see design everywhere, and that the vast
majority of the human race in every age and clime has seen it.
Analogy from experience, sound induction (as we hold) from the works
not only of men but of animals, has made it an all but self-evident
truth to us, that wherever there is arrangement, there must be an
arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to an end, there
must be an adapter; wherever an organisation, there must be an
organiser. The existence of a designing God is no more demonstrable
from Nature than the existence of other human beings independent of
ourselves, or, indeed, the existence of our own bodies. But, like
the belief in them, the belief in Him has become an article of our
common sense. And that this designing mind is, in some respects,
similar to the human mind, is proved to us (as Sir John Herschel
well puts it) by the mere fact that we can discover and comprehend
the processes of Nature.

But here again, if we be contradicted, we can only reassert. If the
old words, "He that made the eye, shall He not see? He that planted
the ear, shall He not hear?" do not at once commend themselves to
the intellect of any person, we shall never convince that person by
any arguments drawn from the absurdity of conceiving the invention
of optics by a blind race, or of music by a deaf one.

So we will assert our own old-fashioned notion boldly; and more: we
will say, in spite of ridicule, that if such a God exists, final
causes must exist also. That the whole universe must be one chain
of