17 JANUARY 1914, Page 3

If his statement seemed to savour of anthropomorphism, he hoped

to commit worse crimes than that "If the modern man's idea of God was descended from ancient and corrupt myths, the very permanence of that idea was proof that it could not be ignored; and it was inadequate, but not untrue, to say that God takes sides and works for great ends, and asks us to work with Him. The plain man's conception of God and the philosophical conception must ultimately be brought into harmony and connexion." In the second lecture, delivered on Wednesday, Mr. Balfour dealt with the arguments from and to design, incidentally remarking that evolution was meaningless without conscious- ness. For himself, he believed that the heavens do declare the glory of God, but only if there are men, and if there is a God; for he held with Bacon that if the universe were the result of blind chance, the glory vanished.