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the heart of every believer, in which "the flesh. lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other." We see it in the world, which is a great battle-field, in which the combatants are truth and error, pollution and purity. There are clear indications as to which side is to gain the victory. True, we "see not yet all things put under Him:" and the reason. is that we are in the heart of the battle, and have a work to do; and not at the close, to survey calmly what has been done. But there are powers operating, powers of God which are sure to prevail. Magna est veritas, et prevalebit." The conscience in the heart claiming supremacy is only a symbol of the good asserting its right to reign, and subdue all things to itself. The believer dies like Samson, midst the glories of his strength, and slays in his death the last of his spiritual enemies. The light has as yet been only partially shed on our earth, but the sun has arisen which is to go round our globe. The work of the Spirit is at present only partial; but we have the assurance that the time is at hand, "when the Spirit of the Lord shall be poured on all flesh."

We have been obliged, in this rapid run through the ages, to step as with seven-leagued boots from mountain-top to mountain-top, without being able to descend into the connections to be found in the

interesting valleys lying between. And what have we gathered?

(1.) We have discovered everywhere traces of Ends, or Final Cause. The whole school with which I am arguing are ever seeking to set aside or disparage final cause. Some of them clothe their pride in the garb of humility, and declare that it would be presumptuous in them to discover the purposes of Deity. They are fond of claiming Francis Bacon as countenancing them. It may be of some moment to inquire what was the precise teaching of that far-sighted and sagacious man on this subject. He adopts Aristotle's fourfold division of causes: the Material, or the matter out of which a thing is formed; the Efficient, by which it is formed; the Formal, the form which it takes; and the Final, being the end which it is made to serve.* It could be shown, did my subject require or admit, that there is a deeper foundation for this division than later philosophers are disposed to allow. If we want to account for a thing, our inquiry will be, Out of what is it made; by what has it been made; what is the form or nature which it has been made to take; and what purposes is it meant to serve? Bacon sanctions and uses this distinction; and in his division of the sciences he proceeds upon it, and allots Material and Efficient Causes to Physics, and Formal and Final to Metaphysics, which he places above Physics. He condemns those who in Physics would mix up the inquiry into Final with that into Efficient Cause; as if one, who would determine the nature of the clouds, should satisfy

* Aristotle, Metaphysics, B. iii. c. 1.

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himself with saying that they are placed in the sky to water the earth with showers. His language on this subject is not so guarded as it ought to be. In physiology, which inquires into the relations of structure in the plant and animal, we look to ends: it was in the very age in which Bacon lived, that Harvey, finding that the valves in the veins opened one way as if to let a liquid pass, but did not open on the other, argued, on the principle of final cause, that the blood must circulate in the frame. Still, Bacon is so far right that it is not expedient to mix the inquiry into physical cause with the inquiry into final. But Bacon takes Final Cause from Physics, simply to carry it up to a higher region and allot it to Metaphysics, which lift us to Theology, to God and Providence, by Formal and Final Causes. In his own graphic way he likens final causes to the vestal virgins, barren of fruit, but consecrated to God.*

Just as there is, and should be, an inquiry into Efficient Cause, so there may be, so should there be, an inquiry into Final Cause. The Final Cause is often more obvious than the Efficient. The end of the eye and of the ear, which is to enable us to see and to hear, presses itself more on our notice than the physical agencies which have produced these complicated organs.

We see now the importance and the application of the two preliminary points laid down in my first lecture. We see that because we have discovered a physical cause, we are not precluded from an

* De Augmentis Scientiarum, iii. 4.

inquiry into final cause. When we discover that a telescope works by the laws of mechanism and of light, we are not to be kept from noticing the design of the instrument, which is to aid the eye in giving us a view of remote objects. Mr. Darwin has thrown out the idea that the eye, as found in the higher animals (such as the eagle), may have been formed on the principle of natural selection, in the course of millions of ages, from the simple apparaof an optic nerve Such a theory appears to

tus found in lower creatures

coated with pigment. many to be far-fetched and wire-drawn. He acknowledges that in such a case he cannot point out the transitional grades. But suppose that he could establish his hypothesis, we should still see the necessity of calling in a number of adaptations to account for the wonderful and complicated result. We should first have to presuppose a nerve sensitive to light. light. On this, all that he has to remark is, "How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated." * And all I have to remark is, that Mr. Darwin, in accounting for so many phenomena by natural law, does not so much as attempt to account for the origin of life, or of nerve force. And then, secondly, we must see the adaptations which have secured that substances should attach themselves to the nerve till it becomes the beautiful mechanism of the eye of the higher animals and of man. And finally we have not to overlook the

* Origin of Species, chap. vi.

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most wonderful fact of all, that this structure enables the animal to see. In like manner, when we have traced the formation of the animal frame to certain powers, mechanical, chemical, and vital, or because we suppose we have resolved the vital power into the chemical, and the chemical into the mechanical, this should not prevent us from looking at the obvious purpose served by the eye, the ear, and every organ of the body. So, should it be found that the elevation of species proceeds from the laws of heredity—it may be from the law of selection this would not even tend to lessen the force of the argument from design. We see, too, the importance of the other preliminary point, that because we are unacquainted with the precise nature of the forces in operation we are not thereby to be precluded from discovering a purpose. The workman may be very imperfectly acquainted with the agencies employed in his factory, but he is sure. that there are method and design in the machine which turns out such products. I believe that the most profound physiologist has penetrated but a very little way into the secret machinery of the life of the individual plant and animal, and still less into the agencies which produce one plant or animal from another; and less still into the powers, whatever they be, which made òrganisms progress from one geologic age to another. But he has only to open his eyes, and allow his intellect to follow its spontaneous course, to discover that in every organ of the animated being, and in the development of