There is a _hiatus,_ it would seem,--an impassable gulf,--between the admission that _law and order_ prevail in Nature, and the conclusion that _law and order_ are manifestations of _design_: "What I supposed to be design in the opening of my argument is _no longer design_.

My reverend friend is wrong in supposing that I admit DESIGN, and yet refuse to admit the force of the _design argument_," On the supposition, then, that _law and order_ are manifestations of _design_, the design argument might be valid and conclusive: but "_no conceivable order_" could prove the existence of God; why?
Because no conceivable order could be a manifestation of _design_.

But how is this proved by the extension of the analogy?
Does it not amount to a denial of the analogy itself?
And is it not an instructive fact that his abortive attempt to disprove the design argument, results, not in the denial of the _inductive inference_, but in the exclusion of the very _analogy_ which he proposed to extend, not in shaking the validity of the proof, but in disputing the fact on which it is based?
The extension of the analogy cannot prove either that law and order are _not_ manifestations of design, or that there may be design without a personal designer; all that it could prove, even were it legitimate, would be the existence of an _organized_ instead of a _spiritual_ Being, which, on the supposition of its self-existence,--a supposition which is not excluded by the argument, since that majestic attribute, which may be fairly held to "include all others," is expressly admitted,--neither requires nor admits of an infinite series of contrivers.
4.

Secularism denies the truth of a special Providence, and also the efficacy of Prayer, while it justly holds both to be indispensable for the purposes of practical religion.
The importance of these doctrines is strongly declared, and sometimes illustrated with much apparent feeling, by Mr.Holyoake himself: "There is more mixed up with the question than the mere fact as to whether some Being exists independently of Nature; for instance, if any man would debate whether there existed a Divine Being, whether a Providence, who was the Father of His creatures, whom we could propitiate by prayer in our danger, from whom we could obtain light in darkness, and help in distress,--if any man debated a proposition like this, I should say there was much of great practical utility about it....

If you tell me God exists, that he is a power, a principle, or spirit, or light, or life, or love, or intelligence, or what you will,--if He be not a Father to whom His children may appeal, if He be not a Providence whom we may propitiate, and from whom we can obtain special help in the hour of danger,--I say, practically, it does not matter to us whether He exists or not."[291] "The great practical question is, whether there exists a Deity to whom we can appeal, who is the Father of his children, who is to be propitiated by prayer, and who will render us help in the hour of danger and distress." With the spirit of these remarks every believer will cordially sympathize.