But forasmuch as the
progress of science has shown that within experience the method of the
Supreme Causality is absolutely uniform, the hypothesis of fortuity is
rendered irrational; and let us think of this Supreme Causality as we may,
the fact remains that from it there emanates a directive influence of
uninterrupted consistency, on a scale of stupendous magnitude and exact
precision, worthy of our highest possible conceptions of Deity.
Sec. 29. Had it been my lot to have lived in the last generation, I doubt not
that I should have regarded the foregoing considerations as final: I should
have concluded that there was an overwhelming balance of rational
probability in favour of Theism; and I think I should also have insisted
that this balance of rational probability would require to continue as it
was till the end of time. I should have maintained, in some such words as
the following, in which the Rev. Baden Powell conveys this argument:--"The
very essence of the whole argument is the invariable preservation of the
principle of _order_: not necessarily such as we can directly recognise,
but the universal conviction of the unfailing subordination of everything
to _some_ grand principles of _law_, however imperfectly apprehended in our
partial conceptions, and the successive subordination of such laws to
others of still higher generality, to an extent transcending our
conceptions, and constituting the true chain of universal causation which
culminates in the sublime conception of the COSMOS.
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