As an outcome of the whole of this discussion, then, I think it appears that the influence of Science upon Natural Religion has been uniformly of a destructive character.  Step by step it has driven back the apparent evidence of direct or special design in Nature, until now this evidence resides exclusively in the one great and general fact that Nature as a whole is a Cosmos.  Further than this it is obviously impossible that the destructive influence of Science can extend, because Science can only exist upon the basis of this fact.  But when we allow that this great and universal fact—­which but for the effects of unremitting familiarity could scarcely fail to be intellectually overwhelming—­does betoken mental agency in Nature, we immediately find it impossible to determine the probable character of such a mind, even supposing that it exists.  We cannot conceive of it as presenting any one of the qualities which essentially characterize what we know as mind in ourselves; and therefore the word Mind, as applied to the supposed agency, stands for a blank.  Further, even if we disregard this difficulty, and assume that in some way or other incomprehensible to us a Mind does exist as far transcending the human mind as the human mind transcends mechanical motion; still we are met by some very large and general facts in Nature which seem strongly to indicate that this Mind, if it exists, is either deficient in, or wholly destitute of, that class of feelings which in man we term moral; while, on the other hand, the religious aspirations of man himself may be taken to indicate the opposite conclusion.  And, lastly, with reference to the whole course of such reasonings, we have seen that any degree of measurable probability, as attaching to the conclusions, is unattainable.  From all which it appears that Natural Religion at the present time can only be regarded as a system full of intellectual contradictions and moral perplexities; so that if we go to her with these greatest of all questions:  ’Is there knowledge with the Most High?’ ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ the only clear answer which we receive is the one that comes back to us from the depths of our own heart—­’When I thought upon this it was too painful for me.’

FOOTNOTES: 

[23] A note (of 1893) contains the following:  ’Being, considered in the abstract, is logically equivalent to Not-Being or Nothing.  For if by successive stages of abstraction, we divest the conception of Being of attribute and relation we reach the conception of that which cannot be, i.e. a logical contradiction, or the logical correlative of Being which is Nothing. (All this is well expressed in Caird’s Evolution of Religion.) The failure to perceive this fact constitutes a ground fallacy in my Candid Examination of Theism, where I represent Being as being a sufficient explanation of the Order of Nature or the law of Causation.’