soning step by step, we come at so accurate a notion of its forms and habits, that we can represent the one, and describe the other, with unerring accuracy; picturing to ourselves how it looked, what it fed on, and how it continued its kind.

"Now, the question is this; What perceivable difference is there between the kind of investigations we have just been considering, and those of Natural Theology,-except, indeed, that the latter are far more sublime in themselves, and incomparably more interesting to us? Where is the logical precision of the arrangement which would draw a broad line of demarkation between the two speculations, giving to the one the name and the rank of a science, and refusing it to the other, and affirming that the one rested upon induction, but not the other? We have, it is true, no experience directly of that Great Being's existence in whom we believe as our Creator; nor have we the testimony of any man relating such experience of his own. But so, neither we, nor any witnesses in any age, have ever seen those works of that Being, the lost animals that once peopled the earth; and yet the lights of inductive science have conducted us to a full knowledge of their nature, as well as a perfect belief in their existence. Without any evidence from our senses, or from the testimony of eyewitnesses, we believe in the existence and qualities of those animals, because we infer by the induction of facts that they once lived, and were endowed with a certain nature. This is called a doctrine of inductive philosophy. Is it less a doctrine of the same philosophy, that the eye could not have been made without a knowledge of optics, and, as it could not make itself, and as no human artist, though possessed of the knowledge, has the skill and power to fashion it by his handy-work, that there must exist some being of knowledge, skill, and power superior to our own, and sufficient to create it?"-pp. 49-51.

It would be difficult, indeed, in any of the physical sciences, wherein we advance from one truth to another, to find a transition more gradual, a step in the argument more plain and easy, than that by which we proceed in the argument from design. A certain arrangement of materials, by which a certain effect is produced, is at once recognised by us as the production of intelligence, and the end is perceived to be an intentional one. In some instances, the intelligence and design are at once referred to man, the work being a human invention. In others, knowing that the machine surpasses human power and skill, we are compelled to refer it to a higher intelligence, to an adequate and designing Cause. We say,

that the nature of different things could not of itself, through so many coöperating means, produce determinate ends, unless these means had been chosen and arranged for this very purpose, through a preconceived plan by a directing and intelligent agent. If we were shown for the first time a complex piece of machinery, a power-loom or a steam-engine, we should not hesitate a moment in ascribing it to human contrivance. Can we deny, then, that the far more skilful piece of mechanism, the human hand, with all its apparatus of joints, tendons, arteries, and skin, is equally a product of intelligence and design, simply because it is known, that the skill of man could not have fashioned it, and therefore we are obliged to ascribe the wisdom and intention to a being of a higher order? The different age of the two inventions makes no important distinction between the cases. Suppose that the power-loom or steam-engine, unknown in modern days, had been dug out of the rocks, like the fossils of an elder world. Would not its discovery afford irrefragable evidence, that men, or a race of beings of skill and power like those of men, existed in the days when those rocks were formed, though no bones or other direct traces of their existence could be found? Yet the skeletons of Ichthyosauri and Megatheria have actually been cut out of the rocks, and their structure affords evidence of creative wisdom and forethought a hundredfold greater than what is given by the engines in question. Thus, even if the present world were a blank in respect to the proofs of design, if we were thrown back upon geological researches for all the traces of God's power, still the great truth of his being would be as indisputably established by those researches, as any other doctrine in the whole science. It would be established by the same species of evidence, the same kind of reasoning, as that through which the Cuviers, the Bucklands, and the Lyells have shown what was the condition of the earth ages ago, when the ocean rolled over the summits of the highest mountains, and what is now the bottom of the sea was dry land.

But it is objected to our argument, that, for aught we know, this vast machine of the universe, which is continually propagating and renewing itself, had no beginning, but has existed from all eternity in an infinite series of changes, decay, and restoration. Apply the corresponding objection to the whole doctrine of geology. Tell the student of that

science, that possibly the marine shells, found embedded in stone on the tops of the Alleghanies and the Alps, have been for ever in their present situation, and never grew beneath the ocean; that the fossil skeletons are equally eternal with the rocks; that there is no distinction, in respect to age, between organic and inorganic things; that the branches and leaves of palm trees and other tropical plants, the perfect shape of which is now moulded in fossil coal, always existed in that coal, and never waved beneath a burning sun; and that the marks of igneous origin and alluvial deposit in the various classes of rocks are all deceptive, mere freaks in the casual disposition of brute matter, which tell no story about the antecedent conditions of the earth's surface. It is certainly impossible. for the geologist to get rid of this objection by a direct answer, or by reasoning of the same kind. He could only say, that the supposition of his antagonist was certainly a possible one, though to feign actual belief of it would outrage all common sense; that it was either proposed in the mere spirit of cavilling, to show the ingenuity of the disputant, or else, that the author of it was a different being from other men, and that it was useless to argue with him. We doubt, whether any writer of reputation on this science ever condescended to notice this hypothesis; certainly it would be idle to set himself seriously at work to disprove it. Perhaps it would be well for writers on Natural Theology to imitate this reserve. For which is the more credible supposition; that what appear like fossil bones and shells never belonged to living animals, but formed originally part of the rock and earth, in which they are now found imbedded; or that this wonderful framework and garniture of the heavens, this system of revolving worlds, whose motions and inequalities are so wonderfully balanced and adjusted, all subject to one law, exerting mutual influence but never interfering, with the appendage of minor orbs, all working harmoniously with the great scheme, that this stupendous machine, we say, was not contrived and set in motion, for the first time, at a definite period, was never designed at all, but has gone on doing its work from everlasting?

We have thus far granted to the atheist more than was necessary, by supposing that the two adverse hypotheses, which we have considered, were entirely parallel. But, in truth, they are not so, for the one relating to the eternity of

the universe, as a whole, is, if possible, still more absurd, than that which confounds the original and the secondary formations on the surface of the earth. In the former case, we can offer a direct refutation of the theory, while in the latter, as we have seen, the geologist can only refer to the intrinsic balance of probability against the hypothesis, which is so great, that a man of sound reason cannot entertain it for a moment. Nothing can be clearer than this, that, if the universe has existed from all eternity, it must continue to exist for an eternity to come. For, by the hypothesis, there can be no cause ab extra of dissolution, and any inherent principles of decay and ruin must have manifested themselves during an infinite series of years. If they have not done so in the infinite duration that is past, it is a proof that they do not exist, and there are none to operate in all future time. In technical phrase, what is infinite a parte ante, must also be infinite a parte post. But the absurdity of attributing an infinite continuance to the totality of things is at once manifest. All living things are subject to death as individuals, and even their propagation and lasting existence as races is wholly contingent and uncertain. No genus or species bears the marks of necessary continuance, and it is absurd to speak of the eternal existence, either way, of an object, the life of which is not insured in the nature of things. Or, to use an

argument that is level to the comprehension of all, we may refer to the recent discovery of astronomers, that the whole solar system is pervaded by an ether, the resistance of which must cause eventually the destruction of that system. Of course, the machine, with such a disturbing cause in it, could not have existed through an infinite antecedent time.

There is another hypothesis of the atheists, of which it may be proper to take some notice, although the absurdities, into which they have themselves been driven in the attempt to develope and apply it, constitute a sufficient refutation of the whole doctrine. It is, that the inherent powers of matter have sufficed, during the lapse of ages, to produce all the organized forms and existences, that now people the earth. Some of the French materialists have bestowed great pains on the exhibition and defence of this monstrous theory, the more willingly because it offers wide scope for a lively fancy and a weak judgment; and even Buffon has partially lent them the authority of his great name. It may seem

idle to argue seriously against the hypothesis, that all the higher orders of animal life, even man himself, have been successively produced and elaborated, as it were, out of reptiles, that were first spontaneously generated from the slime of the sea. Yet, admitting, what we are entitled to claim, that the world, as it now exists, had a beginning in time, those who deny the existence of one intelligent Creator are driven, perforce, by the argument a posteriori to this extravagant supposition. A more complete reductio ad absurdum could hardly follow, even from the proof which claims exclusively the title of a demonstration. But if the theory in respect to the origin of animal life is too wild and ridiculous to merit a serious confutation, the explanation, that it proffers, of the way in which the inanimate portions of the universe were fitly arranged without the aid of a designing Cause, deserves a passing remark. The force of gravity is, of course, the great agent through which, it is supposed, this vast machinery of worlds was originally put together. The various forms in which this force now manifests itself, - through the winds and tides, for instance, often producing curious and regular effects, seemingly of a casual and undesigned origin, lend a shade of probability to the theory. That gravitation, which now appears only as a sustaining power, should be considered also as a creative one, is a violent supposition, that few will be inclined to entertain; but it is not the only difficulty in the hypothesis.

The work of creation cannot be explained through means and agents, which are in themselves a part of that creation. We have no right to suppose, that the power which belongs to a system or a machine, when already constructed and in action, is inherent in the parts or constituent elements of that system, and would manifest itself before those parts were fashioned or arranged. Still further, when that which is called a power, or a quality, is found to be nothing but a law of action, or the mode in which the machine works, it is contradictory and absurd to maintain, that it was the agent through which the action commenced. Let us grant, for a moment, the eternal existence of brute and inorganic matter. The postulate of the atheist, that gravity is an inherent quality of that matter, is contradictory, if not wholly unmeaning. It is as if we should say, that regular action is an inherent property of wheels, springs, and weights, however placed, because, when