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 thore !"-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 !ll * 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. t" "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 saine kind, and at one time condenses itself, and at another spontaneously expands and purifies itself."—Ib. 1. v. c. 6. "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.” İb. l. 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.t 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. We cannot see a law of nature, but we infer it. It is not written, like a proclamation, on visible paper, and hung up in the universe, to be translated or read. The phenomena which it occasions are all that our senses can know; but these indicate it to our discerning and reasoning mind; and we think and conjecture, connect and compare what we ob serve, until we find out the general law or principle on which the facts occur. It is in the same way we learn the agency of the Deity, and the derivation of all the laws of nature from him. It is in the same way we must study and strictly explore his intentions and purposes in them, and in all which they accomplish. We can only know the events and results; but by duly contemplating these, and by rightly rea soning upon them, we shall in time form those probable inferences as to his ends and meaning, which the more judicious minds will feel to be most satisfactory, and will be always trying to confirm or to enlarge and improve.* Our perceptions as to these will become more just and more successful in proportion as our knowledge and exercise of mind upon them increase. The human thought will improve in these meditations, as it has done in all others, by patient attention, by continued deliberation, by comparison of events, by a constant endeavour to ascertain the exact truth, and by a desire to avoid all misleading prepossessions, all hasty theories, and all egotistical presumptions.t *The admirable words of Handel's beautiful and impressive air should be always in our recollection : "What though I trace each herb and flower That drinks the morning dew? Hand. Sol. + Dr. Kidd's concluding paragraph deserves our frequent recollection, -"If, with Newton, we have delighted to deduce from the contemplation of the mechanism of the heavenly bodies the power of HIM who made them, and who alone sustains and directs their motions, we may, and with faculties infinitely expanded, cultivate with him the same pure pleasures which, even on earth, attracted his desires from earthly wants. "Enraptured with the harmonious movement of these endless systems, which neither our present organs can see, nor our present faculties apprehend, we may continue to be constantly acquiring new knowledge; constantly absorbed in new wonder and adoration of THAT POWER, from whom, both in this world and in that which is to come, all knowledge, and every other good and perfect gift, are alone derived."-Dr. Kidd, p. 344. How superior in views like these of our collegiate professor, and of myriads of others who think and feel like him, does the modern mind of 1 The importance of our adhering to the great principle of the divine creation of the world, is strikingly shown in the wild conjectures by which they who reject it and all sacred authorities, attempt still to account for the origin of all things. The two latest systems of this sort now afloat, indicate what we should soon sink to if we abandoned the idea of an intelligent Creator.* LETTER IV. Causes of the Idea of a Creation having been absent from the Ancient Mind-Importance of the Inferences which result from it-Ancient suppositions of Necessity and Fate, instead of a Creation and Providence-No general Providence without an individual one-These Ideas the Foundation of all Sacred History. MY DEAR BOY, Ir may surprise you at the first glance to find that the ancient world were generally unable to cherish in their minds that idea of a creating God which the Hebrew Scriptures inculcate, and which the enlightened population of our own happier day so universally entertain; especially as the communication of the fact accompanied the first existence of our race. The hostility of some among us to this great verity of nature, evinces that it may be opposed by individuals without being unknown or forgotten: but that in every country of antiquity it should have been so much abandoned and disliked, and so human nature appear to that of the greatest and most celebrated men who adorned the ancient nations of the world! * Mr. Cuvier thus states them: "Some writers have reproduced and greatly extended the ideas of De Maillet. They say that, at first, every thing was in a state of liquefaction; that the liquid engendered animals of the simplest kind, such as monads, and others of the infusory and microscopic species; and that, in progress of time, these animals complicated and diversified their species into those now existing." Other writers, like Kepler, assign vital powers to the globe; each of its component parts has life. Not only the very elementary atoms have instinct and will, but every sort of nineral can convert immense masses into its own proper nature. Mountains are the organs of the respiration of the globe, and the schists, the secreting organs!-Cuvier's Fossil Bones, v. i. p. 41. In what do these notions substantially differ from those above quoted from Seneca, which have been so long consigned to derision and oblivion ? |