The world is full of wondrous things that evoke our admiration. Some authors, accordingly, have used the natural world to argue for the existence of the deity. Indeed, for centuries, the study of the natural world was seen as, in part, a devotional act. This lecture examines the emergence and content of natural theology, especially in England in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the important shift it witnesses from a personally devotional aspect of science into an expressly apologetic one. Recently, intelligent design (ID) has appeared as a further step in the track of natural theology. This lecture looks at historical features of both approaches and their limitations.