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I. WHEREVER WE SEE A CHANGE, WE ARE FORCED BY THE VERY CONSTITUTION OF OUR MIND TO BELIEVE THAT IT HAD A CAUSE. If we see a plant growing today where there was none a short while ago, we conclude that some hand has planted it there. If we feel pain we at once ascribe it to some cause, and immediately set about to discover what it is. And so with every change. I take the book geologists have opened for me, and I find there that innumerable changes have passed upon our globe. Science takes us back to a time in its history when there was no life upon it. Nothing, therefore, is more certain than that life had a beginning on our globe. What produced it? The most distinguished scientific men have to confess that there is a gulf here which they cannot bridge. "The present state of knowledge," says Professor Huxley, "furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living." "I am," says Sir W. Thomson, "ready to adopt, as an article of scientific faith, true through all space and through all time, that life proceeds from life and nothing but life." So far, then, as science is concerned, the origin of life remains a mystery. "Give me matter," said Kant, "and I will explain the formation of a world; but give me matter only, and I cannot explain the formation of a caterpillar." I contend, therefore, that the existence of life on our globe proves its origination by a living Being.

II. WHEREVER WE SEE ORDER, WE SEE AN EVIDENCE OF MIND.

1. When we see that changes have been produced through which there runs a principle of order, we are compelled, by the very constitution of our nature, to say, Here is not only a power which causes these changes, but one which has intelligence.

(1) "One day at Naples," says a French writer, "a certain person in our presence put six dice into a box, and offered a wager that he would throw sixes with the whole set. I said that the chance was possible. He threw the dice in this way twice in succession; and I still observed that he had succeeded by chance. He put back the dice into the box for the third, fourth, and fifth time, and invariably threw sixes with the whole set. Then I exclaimed, 'The dice are loaded!' and so they were. And when I look at the order of nature, and consider that there is but one chance which can preserve the universe in the state I now see it, and that this always happens in spite of a hundred millions of other possible chances of perturbation and destruction, I cry out, 'Surely nature's dice are also loaded'"; which is just saying that order is due to intelligence.

(2) Or suppose you come upon a quantity of type lying in confusion. You say these types have been thrown together by accident. But close beside this confused mass you find a form of types, which are so placed as to make words, and the words sentences, and the sentences a continuous story. What would you be constrained to conclude? That it was the result, not of chance, but of intelligence.

(3) Or let us take this building. There you have window, doorway, wall, roof, forming a structure in which you see unity, order, and beauty. All this, you know, is the result of intelligence, and any man who would try to persuade you that as much order and beauty can be produced by mere blind force acting on matter, might as well ask you to give up using your reason altogether.

2. Now, when we turn to nature, we find order everywhere. There may be much in the world of which we do not know the precise use, except that of ornament. The architect who planned this building designed much which was not needed, except to please the eye. And so, in the works of nature, we find precisely the same thing. As Professor Le Comte puts it, "The law of order underlies and conditions the law of use"; and he illustrates this in the following way.

(1) He goes back to the period when fishes were the only representatives of the vertebrate plan of structure. This machine, as he calls the fish, was a swimming machine, fitted for locomotion in the water. Ages pass away, and then reptiles appear; but there is no new organ created to enable them to crawl upon the land. The swimming organ is so modified as to become a crawling one. Ages again pass away, and then birds are introduced. Here again the same order is modified, and becomes a wing which enables them to move in the air. Ages again pass away, and at last man appears on the scene. What is wanted now is not a fin, nor a wing, but a hand; and this is obtained by another modification of the same organ. "And thus, in the hand of man, in the forefoot of a quadruped, in the paw of the reptile, in the wing of a bird, and in the fin of the fish, the same organ is modified for different purposes."(2) Dr. M'Cosh arranges order under four heads — number, time, colour, and form. Take —

(a) Number. You find seven bones in the vertebrae of the neck of all mammalia, whether the neck be short or long.

(b) Colour. Seldom or never are the two primary colours, blue and red, found on the same organ, or in contact on the same plant. Every dot in the flower comes in at the proper place, every tint and shade and hue is in accordance with all that is contiguous to it.

(c) Form. All minerals crystallise in certain forms, and every living object, though composed of numerous parts, has a definite shape as a whole, and a normal shape for each of its organs.

(3) But take a wider view. Sweep the universe with your eye, and you will everywhere find order. "Our own planet is so related to the sun and moon that seed time and harvest, the ebb and flow of tides, never fail. The countless millions of suns and stars are so arranged and distributed in relation to one another, or in accordance with the profoundest mathematics, as to secure the safety of one and all, and to produce everywhere harmony and beauty" (Prof. Flint). Now can you think of that universal order and beauty without thinking of a mind behind it to which they are due?

3. But all this, we are told, is the result of evolution, in which force is revealed but mind dispensed with. But evolution only describes a process, and does not account for it. It is not enough to point to force as the explanation; it may account for change, but not for order. Force throws no light upon the evolution of protoplasm now into a fish, now into a bird, and now into a man. The prevalence of order is the "reign of law"; and the "reign of law" is the reign of mind.

III. IN THE ARRANGEMENTS AND ADAPTATIONS TO ENDS WHICH WE FIND IN MATTER WE HAVE ALSO THE EVIDENCE OF MIND.

1. Take the simple illustration of a rude hut. The materials are so placed and adapted that you have not only order, but a useful end; you have a contrivance, an evidence here of design, and this means that you have here a proof of mind. Or take the steam engine. There you have iron, water, coal, and fire; but observe how they are arranged. The iron is so disposed as to furnish a receptacle for the water, and a chamber into which coals can be put and lighted. You have also cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, and wheels. And then the connection of all the parts is such that, when the coals are lighted, the water is changed into steam, which gives motion to piston, rod, and wheel, and sends the engine along its track, or propels the vessel over the ocean. No mere shaking of coal, iron, and water, for any period, however lengthened, and by any forces, however mighty, could ever have resulted in forming such an engine. No union and adjustment of them, such as we have, could have been brought about by mere chance. This adaptation and arrangement of different elements of matter, so as to accomplish this end, the production of motive power, required mind, ay, and vastly more of it than the construction of a rude hut.

2. Now, let us turn to the works of nature, and we shall see that whether we look to earth, or ocean, or sky, or man, we meet everywhere with arrangements for distinct ends, which reveal the highest intelligence, and not only constrain belief in the Divine existence, but rouse to admiration and praise.

(1) We take this globe, which revolves around the sun. There are two forces acting upon it, which balance each other — the one tending to draw it towards, and the other to draw it away from, the sun. If the first of these had been greater than it is, the earth would have been drawn into the sun and destroyed; and if the second had been stronger than it is, then, just as a stone slung round the head flies off when the string is let go, so the earth would have rashed from its orbit into darkness and ruin. In this adjustment of forces, then, which preserves our world, do we not see the manifestations of a controlling mind?

(2) We take the book which the geologist has opened. The great convulsions it records prove to have been but the birth throes of a world fitted for the varied necessities of the living creatures which inhabit it. The coal and the iron, for example, which, more than anything else, have contributed to human civilisation and comfort, have had their strata tilted up by these, so that man could reach them. The disposition of land and water; the elevation, slope, and direction of the mountain ranges; the scooping out of the valleys; the elevation of vast plateaus; the formation of the lakes; the streams; the oceanic currents — all these affect the temperature, rainfall, and vegetation.

(3) Turn to the atmosphere, which is essential to life.

(a) Its chemical elements are being constantly abstracted in the vital processes of vegetable and animal; but what the one consumes the other supplies; and so, by this and other arrangements, the balance of elements in the air is maintained, otherwise it would become unfit to support life.

(b) Look at it us the medium for the diffusion of light and heat and sound. If we had no atmosphere, then, while every object on which the sun's rays fell would dazzle us by its brightness, everything else would be in the deepest darkness. Nor could we hear, for the air is necessary to the transmission of sound. Nor could the heat of the sun's rays be retained and diffused without an atmosphere.

(4) From dead matter let us turn to organic or living matter. Take vegetable life. When a certain cycle of existence has been passed, vegetable growths die; but before they die they make provision for the continuance of their species.

(5) Let us ascend to a higher region. The structure of the human body. "How complicate I how wonderful is man!" The writer of one of the old Hermetic books called "The Divine Poemander" puts the argument from man's structure in this way: "Consider, O son, how man is made and framed in the womb; and examine diligently the skill and cunning of the workman, and learn who it was that wrought and fashioned the beautiful and divine shape of man. Who circumscribed and marked out his eyes? Who bored his nostrils and ears? Who opened his mouth? Who stretched out and tied together his sinews? Who hardened and made strong the bones? Who clothed the flesh with skin? Who divided the fingers and the joints? Who flattened and made broad the soles of the feet? Who digged the pores? Who stretched out the spleen? Who made the heart like a pyramid? Who made the liver broad and the lungs spongy and full of holes? Who made the belly large and capacious? Who set to view the more honourable parts and hid the filthy ones? See how many arts in one matter; and how many works in one superscription, and all exceedingly beautiful, and all done in measure, and yet all differing. Who hath made all these things? What mother? What father? Save only God that is most manifest — that made all things by His own will." Now, "Who in the world is a verier fool," as Jeremy Taylor puts it, "than he who is an atheist?...Can anything in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance for blind force when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects and no cause; an excellent government and no prince; a motion without an immovable; a circle without a centre; a time without an eternity; a second without a first; a thing that begins not from itself, and therefore not to perceive that there is something from whence it does begin, which must be without beginning; these things are so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must needs be a beast in understanding who does not assent to them; this is the atheist. 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.'"

(A. Oliver, B. A.)

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KJV: Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

WEB: because that which is known of God is revealed in them, for God revealed it to them.