PRINTED BY R. CLAY, LONDON, FOR MACMILLAN & CO. CAMBRIDGE. London: BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET. Dublin: WILLIAM ROBERTSON. Edinburgh: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. Glasgow: JAMES MACLEHOSE. Oxford: J. H. AND JAS. PARKER. THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF, IN CONNEXION WITH THE CREATION AND THE FALL. BY THOMAS RAWSON BIRKS, M.A. RECTOR OF KELSHALL, HERTS, FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE. Cambridge: MACMILLAN AND CO. INTRODUCTION. ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. THE existence of One First Cause, powerful, wise, good, and holy, the Lord and Governor of the universe, is the foundation of all natural and revealed religion. It is the fountain out of which every other truth must really flow. "I AM THAT I AM. I AM THE FIRST AND THE LAST, and besides me there is no God." In these messages, God has announced to mankind his own prerogative of unchangeable, eternal, essential being. All creatures, compared with Him, are less than nothing, and vanity. His majesty dwarfs the splendour of all created beauty; and the universe, apart from Him who formed and sustains it, would almost appear, to the eye of reason, like a shadowy dream. But there may be a great contrast between the certainty and dignity of a truth in itself, and the clearness with which it is apprehended by men. What is first and highest in its own nature, may possibly be latest in the order of human knowledge. The laws on which the movements of our earth, and the changes of its seasons depend, existed for long ages before their B |