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apt to create each other, neither will, as knowledge advances and judgment improves, be attached to the mind of any educated, philanthropic, or wellmeaning individual.

LETTER III.

On the Laws of Nature--What they really are-Their divine Origin and Operation.

By steadily regarding all things as the designed and purposed creation of God, we shall form juster notions than we commonly do on what are called the laws of nature; and as these are what are almost only taken into consideration, in the modern writings on the physical sciences, as the causes of the phenomena they describe, it will be important to our due comprehension of the sacred history of the world, that we should endeavour to establish in our minds a correct perception of what they really are; especially if we desire to avoid attaching to them any atheistical signification, or wish not to use them as mere words or forms of phrase. Both of these applications would be unworthy of an intellectual man. Whoever values rightness of thought or advancement of knowledge, will not willingly make use of any terms without a distinct and clear meaning in his own mind when he chooses the verbal expressions by which he denotes and imparts it. Nothing more perpetuates error than the repetition of words of course, without just ideas being connected with them.

The laws of nature have been stated to be the properties of material things; the modes of their mutual action and the rules of their causations:* and in this largeness of sense they imply the acting powers of nature, the direction or regulation of these powers in their operation, and the effects produced by them.

* "Laws of nature. In this phrase are included all properties of the portions of the material world; all modes of action and rules of causation according to which they operate on each other. The whole course of the visible universe, therefore, is but the collective result of such laws. Its movements are only the aggregate of their working."-Whewell's Bridgw. Treat. Astron. p. 7.

VOL. II.-E

But this extent of meaning makes them almost synonymous with external nature altogether, for that is but a series of causes and effects; of operating powers governed in their agency, and producing consequential results. Adding to this the fact, that they have been established by the Deity himself, and therefore originate from him,* we have the Creator and the creation displayed before us in this description of the laws of nature. Nothing can be more comprehensive and satisfactory. These laws must be as numerous as the parts and composition of nature are diversified, and they are fitly so represented to us. In considering the laws of nature thus, we are contemplating the Deity in his creating and conserving operations; and all the phenomena which we witness and admire, are the consequences of his perpetual agency, by the instrumentality of these his appointed, governed, and continued laws. The laws of nature are thus his laws; the science which they display is his science; their universal operation is his universal agency; the effects which they occasion are his intended and produced results. The laws of nature thus exhibit to us the will, the decisions, the ordainments, the meaning, and the purposes of the divine intellect in their principles, their rules or regulations, their applications, and their co-operations. These they are always manifesting to us in the phenomena which they are producing; which phenomena must be what they were intended to occasion; as all causes are used for the sake of the effects which they produce, and these must be such as were meant to follow from the causing action.

Let us keep these principles always in our view when we talk or think of the laws of nature, and we shall not then get into the habit of using the phrase without any thought of their Divine Author, or as something quite independent of him, and with which he has no concern, and which would have subsisted without him; or as what do not proceed from him.

* Mr. Whewell divides his subject into two portions: "cosmical arrangements and terrestrial adaptations. The former may be best suited to introduce to us the Deity as the institutor of laws of nature; though the latter may afterward give us a wider view and clearer insight into one province of his legislation."-Whewell's Bridg. Treat. Astron p. 16.

The number and variety of the laws which we find established in the universe are so great, that it would be idle to endeavour to enumerate them. In their operations they are combined and intermixed in incalculable and endless complexity; influencing and modifying each other's effects in every direction."-Ib. p. 12.

By some they have been spoken of in this erroneous sense; and by a too careless omission of all reference to him, they often seem to be so used, when the real meaning of the author, if fairly asked, would be found quite contrary to such an imputation.

Let us, then, remember, that whenever a law of nature operates, a power in nature is so operating. The enunciation of the law is but a designation of the power, and that particular power must either originate from itself, or from a superior power, which can only be the general Creator.

But all laws act in a regulated manner and to specific effects, and are in adjusted or governed harmony and coincidence with each other. They must, then, either regulate, adjust, and govern themselves, or they must be arranged and guided by some power extraneous to themselves, which can arrange and guide them; but no power can do so which has not mind, thought, intention, will, and determination, and so much of these as is adequate to do what is performed. The superior power from which all the laws of nature originate, and by which they are regulated, must, then, be an intelligent being, of a largeness of mind more than equal to all which the laws of nature exhibit or imply, as it comprehends, has derived, and established, and actuates all.

This leads us to the same inference as before. This being can only be the admirable and all-wise Creator.*

The operating powers or laws of nature are moving powers; as such, they must either be self-moving, or be put into their motions by a power greater than their own. But if they be self-moving, all must be so, one as much as another; and this idea would give us as many self-moving powers in nature as there are moving forces; but if the active laws of nature are innumerable, we shall then have an innumerable quantity of self-moving forces.

Now we find, as already noticed, that all the laws and powers of nature are acting in a regulated manner, producing each its specific effect, and that all harmonize with mutual co-operation. They must, then, be all acting in concert with

* "Of such laws, HE is the lawgiver. At what an immeasurable interval is HE thus placed above every thing which the creation of the inanimate world alone would imply; and how far must HE transcend all ideas founded on such laws as we find there !"-Whewell, Astron. p. 373.

each other, and therefore from some previous deliberation and certain compact, understood or established; that is, all the self-moving forces must be thinking, intending, adjusting, and self-governing powers, entering into the necessary agreement with each other as to their mutual coincidences or interferences; and thus, like a national assembly, or a grand parliament of all visible nature, decreeing by their general consent what each shall do or shall not do, and thus settling a general constitution, with appropriate laws for each to observe, and for all to conform to. But this supposition converts them at once into rational beings; and instead of natural laws, forces, and powers of mere physical agency, we are brought back to the ancient chimeras of the world, which revelation and increased science have so happily exploded. On this theory the Stoics were not absurd in saying that the wind, like a human being, could move itself spontaneously ;* and that water had the same power of self-motivity, and, as a living thing, could bring forth living creatures ; nay, that fire had such a vitality and productive property; nor that the revolving planets were likewise moving animals, and that all the stars, with the sun, moon, and earth, were self-moving divinities, as other things also are as rationally supposed to be !

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*Seneca says, "I think the truer and more powerful cause of wind is, that the air has a natural power of moving itself (movendi se); nor can I conceive any thing else, but that this property is in it, as in some other things. Can you think that a power like this is given to us, by which we spontaneously move, and that the air should be less inert and without this agitability ?"-Nat. Quest. 1. v. c. 5.

"So the water has a self-motion of its own, when there is no wind to disturb it; nor could it otherwise bring forth animals; yet we see them born out of waters, and things of an herb species floating_upon them. Air has some power of the same kind, and at one time condenses itself, and at another spontaneously expands and purifies itself."—Ib. 1. v. c. 6.

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"Is there any thing vital in water? Do I speak only of water? Why, fire, which consumes all things, likewise creates them. It seems not possible to be true, and yet it is so. Animals are generated by fire." Ib. 1. v. c. 6.

Cicero sneers at the Stoic for believing "that the world itself is a wise creature, has a mind which, by its own agency, made its frame, and still moves and governs it ;" also, that "the sun, the moon, all the stars and sea, were gods, and that a kind of animalis intelligentia pervades and passes through them all."-" These things may be true, but I deny that they can be perceived or comprehended."-Cicer. Lucul. p. 92.

Thus, Zeno thought that the ethereal sky was the Summus Deus mente præditus, by which all things were governed; Cic. Luc. p. 97.

At this rate, every moving power in nature is a living and an intelligent being, and acts for itself as such, as much as we do in our homes and cities, in our literary, public, and private affairs. But no mind is now so gross as to be imposed upon by such vagaries. We should consign to medical care any one who should seriously maintain now, as so many in the ancient world did, that any acting power or force in earthly nature was a living and an intelligent being, except our own race and the universal Creator.

The laws and powers of nature cannot be, therefore, selfmoving or self-regulative, but must be moved and regulated by the only being superior to themselves which is living and intelligent, and capable to think, adjust, and direct; and this again must be concluded to be the Almighty cause of all things.*

Thus the laws of nature, properly considered, lead us in every view to him. They are in all things his laws-his appointed, intended, and governed agencies. In them we see his mind and will in action. They are the servants of his intelligence, and the ministers to execute his plans, and to perform daily and continuously his orders and intentions, as much as our hands or our obeying assistants in our several families, are daily executing ours.†

In all cases they are, like his agency and superintendence, the inferences of our judgment not the objects of our sight.

In the same spirit, Anaxemenes made the air a deity; De Nat. Deor. p. 22. While Xenocrates wrote in his books "that there are eight gods; five in the moving planets, one composed of all the fixed stars, which are like his limbs, another the sun, and the eighth the moon."-Cic. Nat. Deor. 1. i. p. 27.

"His power, his wisdom, his goodness, appear in each of the provinces of nature, which are thus brought before us: and in each, the more we study them, the more impressive, the more admirable do they appear. When we find these qualities manifested in each of so many successive ways, and each manifestation rising above the preceding by unknown degrees, and through a progression of unknown extent, what other language can we use concerning such attributes, than that they are INFINITE ?"-Whewell's Astron p. 372.

† Dr. Kidd very appositely asks,-"In calculating the unerring motions of the heavenly bodies, have we been content to characterize the certainty and regularity of their motions as the result of necessity, or of the laws of an undefined agent, called nature? And in thus failing to acknowledge explicitly the Author of these laws, though not indeed formally denying his existence, have we, like the nations of old, worshipped the creature rather than the Creator."-Dr. Kidd's Bridg. Treat. on the Adaptation of external Nature, p. 343.

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