eatures, or
possibly the Devil's {101} attempts to imitate His works; but the
prevailing ideas were of the most primitive kind. Even Paley could
give us no better explanation of certain rudimentary anatomical organs,
than by suggesting that the creature in whom they were found had been
so far constructed before it was decided what its sex should be! We
can see that if any real progress in knowledge was to be made, a change
of a very radical order had to come. And it did come.

The _second stage_ was Scientific rather than religious. The thought
of God occupied a less prominent place in proportion as men's minds
were yielded to the attraction of the new studies. This was partly
due, as we have already explained, to the fact that causes were found
to account for the phenomena which had previously, for the lack of the
understanding of such causes, been attributed to the immediate exercise
of supernatural power. Partly, also, it was due to a growing distrust
of human ability, which resulted from the belief that this was nothing
more than a recent development from a lower animal ancestry. A mind
thus originated was supposed to be debarred from forming any
trustworthy notion of the nature of a First Cause which had operated,
if at all, at some point infinitely distant in the long succession of
ages.

The main work of this stage was to prosecute {102} research into the
elaborated mechanism, or as men soon came to prefer to think of it, the
developing growth of the world. And wonderful, beyond all
anticipation, was the success which rewarded the pains that were
lavishly bestowed upon the inquiry. Small marvel was it that some
men's heads were well-nigh turned, and that to many it seemed little
less than certain that science had dispensed with the supernatural
altogether; and that it only required time, and no great length of
time, to secure universal acceptance for the materialistic explanations
which were destined, as they supposed, to leave no mysteries of life
unsolved. But such persons had reckoned with a too hasty and
superficial knowledge of the data involved. Little by little the
counter-criticisms produced their effect. The idea of a First and
Permanent Cause was shewn to be as indispensable as ever; not, indeed,
as an influence to be pushed far back, and to be thought of as acting
either once or occasionally. A truer reading of the meaning of what
had been discovered led to the grateful acknowledgment th