Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/330

296 holds that the chain is complete without this forming a link in it. All that is necessary for his purpose is to prove that matter is not self-existent; so that his argument would be equally strong though the opinion of the ancient philosophers were admitted, that matter is an eternal effect of an eternal cause.

With regard to the a posteriori argument, the attempt to prove a beginning is limited to the collocations of matter. It is satisfied with the proof of a plastic creation, leaving the question of an absolute creation untouched. Paley, for example, deals only with the watch. He abandons the stone (representing unformed matter) as beyond his province. Dr Chalmers narrows still further the sphere of Natural Theology. He throws aside altogether the argument of design as an independent argument. He holds that we are not warranted from design to infer a designer. He denies that this is an ultimate principle in our nature, and falls back on Dr Thomas Brown's doctrine of sequence. According to this doctrine, we, by the constitution of our nature, necessarily infer the antecedent from the consequent, and vice versa. In the case in question the consequent is the design, the antecedent is the designing mind. But he holds, following the views of Dr Crombie, that the design must be proved to be a consequent before we can infer the antecedent designer—that the world must be proved to be an effect before the design which it manifests can lead us to the First