cunning displayed in the architecture of the universe. The most obvious and ready way for the atheist to contravene this argument is to bring into the foreground the contrary of this; and to assert roundly that there is really as much disorder as order in the universe. Of course, for this form of argumentation there are materials at hand of a very formidable look not far to fetch: Neapolitan and Icelandic volcanoes; Lisbon earthquakes; inundations of the Garonne at Toulouse, or of the Dee at Aberdeen; storms, squalls, cyclones, shipwrecks, conflagrations, conspiracies, murders, massacres, idiocies, madness, and all sorts of evil and foolish things which make a prominent figure in the newspapers. But, before we talk on these subjects in a perplexed or, what is worse, in an inculpatory humour, let us consider calmly what our position in this vast universe really is. It is pretty much like the position of a single ant-hill in a vast forest. If you happen to be walking through some pine forest, as at Aviemore or Braemar, with your head very high, and full of fine fancies, let us imagine, you come roughly, with your heel, booted and spurred perhaps, plump into the middle of that metropolis of straws; then what happens? the architecture of laborious weeks is destroyed in a

moment, and some scores of those active little intelligences called ants squelched out of existence, at a stroke. Now, suppose one of the ants who had not been squelched, with a particularly sensitive brain, and a great amount of self-importance, being able to make theories like human philosophers, should excogitate a treatise or a tissue of imaginations that might make a treatise, to the effect-My beautiful architecture has been destroyed: therefore, either there is no God, or a God who delights in mischief. What think you of this logic? If it is just, then let us all become atheists to-morrow ; if it is ridiculous, let us hear nothing more of such The real fact is, that in a vast and varied world, heaving and swelling, and ramping everywhere, so to speak, with the most eager vitality, collisions and confusions of vital forces will constantly be occurring, which may produce a certain amount of discomfort to individual existences, or even blow them out altogether, but which prove no more the disorder of the universe, than a skit of a boy's squirt can put out the sun. In some parts of the west of Scotland, from the peculiar configuration of the richly varied coast-line, two opposite tides come in, and where they meet make a jabble which disturbs the serenity sometimes of nervous

nonsense.

ladies in pleasure-boats. Is there therefore no certain and regular flow in the tides, but only a universal jabble? The whole system of the world, from the wheeling planets in the sky to the little brown ant-hill, or the grey crusted lichen on the crag, exists in, by, and through a reasoned order: the disorder belongs not to the existence of any one thing, but to points of occasional disturbance arising naturally out of the co-existence of many things. Who can look nakedly on such logic as this without smiling-"I have the toothache; therefore there is no God"? This is the way a clever French writer puts the absurdity of this plea for atheism. It is the product of narrowness of view, and selfishness of feeling. Let Dr. Paley's answer suffice for all such vain talkers:-"The teeth do ache sometimes, but they were manifestly not made for aching."

On the subject of EVIL generally a great deal of impertinent stuff has been talked-not seldom by very pious people, who forget, in the first place, to tell us what GOOD is; and, in the second place, fail to show us how much of what is good and best in the world could possibly have been produced without the existence of many forms of what is commonly called EVIL. Sir William Hamilton, in one of his

chapters, defines pleasure unhindered energy. Very well; this is a sort of pleasure which may suit some persons, or many persons. But there are othersnot a few-who will say that they prefer the pleasure which arises, not from the absence, but from the presence, of hindrances. Their notion of happiness is to struggle with difficulties, not to evade them. What, it may well be asked, is the use of energy, if not to struggle with difficulty? But difficulty is only another name for what lazy people call evil; as when virtue is described as an up-hill work, and vice as a prone descent. If virtue were as easy as vice, virtue would cease to be virtue; in other words, in a world where there was no evil. there could be no good—at least, no good of the highest kind. If there were no ignorance, how could there be the greedy delight of opening up from ignorance into knowledge? If all men instinctively knew everything, where were the pleasant relation of teacher and taught? If there were no poverty, where were charity? If every person were equally independent and self-reliant, where would be the gracious pleasure on both sides which arises from the support given by the strong to the weak? Where, again, would be the topping virtue of moral courage, unless the majority, at some

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particular critical moment, were cowards? Where would be the skill of the pilot, unless there were squalls and unexpected blasts, by which people might possibly be drowned? Where the science of a surgeon, if legs were made of stuff that could not possibly break? And if the garden, left to itself, grew, not nettles and thistles and hawkweed and dock, but only roses and potatoes and peas, where were the work of the gardener? In fact, always and everywhere the development of energy implies the existence of that which energy must subdue namely, evil in some shape or other. Therefore the existence of evil is not a proof that there is no God; but it is by the over-coming of evil constantly that God proves Himself to be God, and man proves himself to be God-like, when, in his subordinate sphere, he does the same. The only real evil in the world is the negative, carping spirit, the Mephistopheles of Goethe's "Faust," which, for lack of will to use the given materials in the given way, gratifies an unreasoning restlessness in blaming everything and doing nothing.

These are only a few of the considerations which might be adduced to show how unmeaning are the objections which the atheist brings against the grand and beautiful order of breathing things which we