method which combines both elements from experience and a priori elements. The Rev. Dr. John Cairns regarded the work as a positive contribution to theistic argument, and said that the author (whose name was not declared) need only to give himself entirely to this topic or any other to secure distinguished success. Five hundred copies of the book were printed, and it paid expenses and returned a small profit.
Notwithstanding it was anonymous, Mr. Croll gained a reputation from this work, which led to his connection, in 1858, with the Commonwealth newspaper, a journal at Glasgow devoted to the advocacy of temperance and social and political reform; a position which, as he was a total abstainer and a strong advocate of temperance and had forsworn the use of tobacco, suited him very well.
After he had worked a year and a half with the Commonwealth, the directors of the Andersonian College advertised for a janitor. Mr. Croll applied for the position, which involved the keeping of the museum and the free run of the libraries, and, obtaining it, entered upon its duties in the fall of 1859. He found it the most congenial position he ever occupied, notwithstanding one of its duties was the disagreeable one, of which no mention is found in his autobiography, of collecting subscriptions from private gentlemen for the support of the institution. "After twenty years of an unsettled life," he says, "full of hardships and difficulties, it was a great relief to get settled down into what might be regarded as a permanent home." But "Why so many changes, trials, and difficulties?" The disability of his arm precluded him from active work and compelled him to make changes of occupation which were not advantageous. But the main cause of his troubles, he confesses, "was that strong and almost irresistible propensity toward study which prevented me devoting my whole energy to business. Study always came first, business second; and the result was that in this age of competition I was left behind in the race." His situation in the college was compatible with study.
Mr. Croll's tastes were nearly evenly balanced between philosophical and theological speculation and the study of physical science, partly to his advantage and partly to his disadvantage; so that, as he observes, when he was engaged in physics he was continually tempted to turn aside into philosophy, and when in philosophy the attractions of physics frequently drew him over, and it was only by strong effort that he could keep in one region of inquiry without passing over into the other. Hitherto he had been engaged for about fifteen years in philosophical and theological studies, the culmination of which was his book on theism. Now the Andersonian Library afforded facilities for
