by which the government of the physical world is directed to physical good.

We may perhaps see glimpses of such an order, in the arrangements by which our highest and most important duties depend upon our relation to a small circle of persons immediately around us: and again, in the manner in which our acting well or ill results from the operation of a few principles within us; as our conscience, our desire of moral excellence, and of the favour of God. We can hardly consider such principles otherwise than as intended to occupy their proper place in the system by which man's destination is to be determined; and thus, as among the means of the government and superintendence of God in the moral world.

That there must be an order and a system to which such regulative principles belong, the whole analogy of creation compels us to believe. It would be strange indeed, if, while the mechanical world, the system of inert matter, is so arranged that we cannot contemplate its order without an elevated intellectual pleasure;—while organized life has no faculties without their proper scope, no tendencies without their appointed object; the rational faculties and moral tendencies of man should belong to no systematic order, should operate with no corresponding purpose: that, while the perception of sweet and bitter has its acknowledged and unquestionable uses, the

universal perception of right and wrong, the unconquerable belief of the merit of certain feelings and actions, the craving alike after moral advancement and after the means of attaining it, should exist only to delude, perplex, and disappoint man. No one, with his contemplations calmed and filled and harmonized by the view of the known constitution of the universe, its machinery "wheeling unshaken" in the farthest skies and in the darkest cavern, its vital spirit breathing alike effectively in the veins of the philosopher and the worm ;-no one, under the influence of such a train of contemplations, can possibly admit into his mind a persuasion which makes the moral part of our nature a collection of inconsistent and futile impressions, of idle dreams and warring opinions, each having the same claims to our acceptance. Wide as is the distance between the material and the moral world; imperfect as all reasonings necessarily are which attempt to carry the inferences of one into the other; elevated above the region of matter as all the principles and grounds of truth must be, which belong to our responsibilities and hopes; still the astronomical and natural philosopher can hardly fail to draw from their studies an imperturbable conviction that our moral nature cannot correspond to those representations according to which it has no law, coherency, or object. The mere natural reasoner may, or

from

must, stop far short of all that it is his highest interest to know, his first duty to pursue; but even he, if he take any elevated and comprehensive views of his own subject, must escape the opinions, as unphilosophical as they are comfortless, which would expel from our view of the world all reference to duty and moral good, all reliance on the most universal grounds of trust and hope.

Men's belief of their duty, and of the reasons for practising it, connected as it is with the conviction of a personal relation to their Maker, and of His power of superintendence and reward, is as manifest a fact in the moral, as any that can be pointed out is in the natural world. By the mere analogy which has been intimated, therefore, we cannot but conceive that this fact belongs in some manner or other to the order of the moral world, and of its government.

When any one acknowledges a moral governor of the world; perceives that domestic and social relations are perpetually operating and seem intended to operate, to retain and direct men in the path of duty; and feels that the voice of conscience, the peace of heart which results from a course of virtue, and the consolations of devotion, are ever ready to assume their office as our guides and aids in the conduct of all our actions ;-he will probably be willing to acknowledge also that the means of a moral government of each indivi

dual are not wanting; and will no longer be oppressed or disturbed by the apprehension that the superintendence of the world may be too difficult for its Ruler, and that any of His subjects and servants may be overlooked. He will no more fear that the moral than that the physical laws of God's creation should be forgotten in any particular case and as he knows that every sparrow which falls to the ground contains in its structure innumerable marks of the Divine care and kindness, he will be persuaded that every man, however apparently humble and insignificant, will have his moral being dealt with according to the laws of God's wisdom and love; will be enlightened, supported, and raised, if he use the appointed means which God's administration of the world of moral light and good offers to his use.

CHAPTER IV.

On the Impression produced by the Contemplation of Laws of Nature; or, on the Conviction that Law implies Mind.

THE various trains of thought and reasoning which lead men from a consideration of the natural world to the conviction of the existence, the power, the providence of God, do not require,

for the most part, any long or laboured deduction,
to give them their effect on the mind. On the
contrary, they have, in every age and country,
produced their impression on multitudes who
have not instituted any formal reasonings upon
the subject, and probably upon many who have
not put their conclusions in the shape of any
express propositions. The persuasion of a
superior intelligence and will, which manifests
itself in every part of the material world, is, as
is well known, so widely diffused and deeply
infixed, as to have made it a question among
speculative men whether the notion of such a
power is not universal and innate. It is our
business to show only how plainly and how
universally such a belief results from the study
of the appearances about us.
That in many
nations, in many periods, this persuasion has
been mixed up with much that was erroneous
and perverse in the opinions of the intellect or
the fictions of the fancy, does not weaken the
force of such consent. The belief of a super-
natural and presiding power runs through all
these errors and while the perversions are
manifestly the work of caprice and illusion,
and vanish at the first ray of sober enquiry, the
belief itself is substantial and consistent, and
grows in strength upon every new examination.
It was the firmness and solidity of the convic-
tion of something Divine which gave a hold and

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