While allowing, then, the element of Faith in our recognition of a Creator and Moral Governor of the world, our care is in this, as in all exercises of faith, that our faith be reasonable.  We are not called on to believe so as to be “put to confusion,” intellectually, as Tait and Balfour have it.

CHAPTER III.

THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION STATED.

It will strike some readers with a sense of hopelessness, this demand for a reason in our faith.  A special and very extensive knowledge is required, it seems, to test the very positive assertion that some have chosen to make regarding the “explosion” of the Christian faith in the matter of Creation.

We are told in effect that every thing goes by itself—­that given some first cause, about which we know, and can know, nothing, directly primordial matter appears on the scene, and the laws of sequence and action which observed experience has formulated and is progressively formulating are given, then nothing else is required; no governance, no control, and no special design.  So that in principle a Creator and Providence are baseless fancies; and this is further borne out by the fact, that when the Christian faith ventures on details as to the mode of Creation it is certainly and demonstrably wrong.  If these propositions are to be controverted, it must be in the light of a knowledge which a large body of candid and earnest believers do not possess.

Fortunately, however, the labours of many competent to judge have placed within the reach of the unscientific but careful student, the means of knowing what the conclusions of Science really are, as far as they affect the questions we have to consider.  At least, any inquirer can, with a little care and patient study, put himself in a position to know where the difficulty or difficulties lie, and what means there are of getting over them.  His want of technical knowledge will not be in his way, so far as his just appreciation of the position is concerned.  Without pretending to take up ground which has already been occupied by capable writers whose books can easily be consulted, I may usefully recapitulate in a simple form, and grouped in a suitable order, some of the points best worth noting.

The theory of cosmical evolution is not, in its general idea, a new thing.  The sort of evolution, however, that was obscurely shadowed forth by the early sages of India (much as it is the fashion now to allude to it) really stands in no practical relation to the modern and natural theory which is associated with the name of CHARLES DARWIN, and which has been further taken up by Mr. HERBERT SPENCER and others as the foundation for a complete scheme of cosmic philosophy.  The theory is now, in its main features, admitted by every one.  But there are a few who would push it beyond its real ascertained limits, and would substitute fancies for facts; they are not content to leave the lacunae, which undoubtedly do exist, but fill them up by hypothesis,[1] passing by easy steps of forgetfulness from the “it was possibly,” “it was likely to have been,” to the “it must have been,” and “it was”!