Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Thepaper's unusually extensive use of commas remains unchanged.

THE CREATOR,
AND WHAT WE MAY KNOW OF THE
METHOD OF CREATION.

THE FERNLEY LECTURE OF 1887.

W. H. DALLINGER, LL.D., F.R.S.

‘For I have learned

To look on Nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth.... And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.’

Wordsworth.

Seventh Thousand.

LONDON:
T. WOOLMER, 2, Castle Street, City Road, E.C.,
and 66, Paternoster Row, E.C.
1887.

TO
JAMES S. BUDGETT, Esq.,
IN REMEMBRANCE OF
A FRIENDSHIP
WHICH HAS INFLUENCED BENEFICENTLY
MUCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK;
THIS LITTLE VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

The following discourse was prepared as a lecture. Withthe exception of the insertion of passages which it wasfound necessary to omit in delivery, on account of toogreat length, it is printed as it was spoken. It addressed, andin its present form addresses, thoughtful and earnest minds,not concerned specially with questions of philosophy, metaphysics,and science, but alive to the advanced knowledge andthought of our times, and anxious to know, so far as in such aform it could be expressed, how the great foundation ofreligious belief, the existence of Deity, is affected by thesplendid advance of our knowledge of nature. To havewritten more than the following pages contain, in answeringthis desire, would have necessitated what I haveearnestly endeavoured to avoid, a change from a discourseinto a treatise. It is hoped that, as it is presented, it mayto some extent be found useful to those who sought it—notso much students, as men interested in the deeperthought of our age, but whose time is occupied with thelabours and engagements of a busy life.

W. H. Dallinger.

Wesley College, Sheffield,
September 1, 1887.

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