regions or in different circumstances. "Don't you suppose," said a brahmin to an American missionary, pointing to a bearer who was toiling in the sun, "that that man is in hell?" The Greenlander amidst his snows, the slave toiling all his life long under the lash, with no knowledge of a futurity, can hardly feel that the present world is greatly good to them. So discrepant have been the appearances of nature, the principles of good and evil have been so blended together, that many nations have imagined the existence of two beings to whom they have imputed the origin of all things, the one benevolent, the other malevolent. Between these, they have fancied a continual struggle, and not seldom have they chiefly worshipped and endeavored to propitiate the malevolent being. They knew of the sunshine and the breezes, of the flowers and the fruits; but they knew, also, of the volcano and the earthquake, of the tempest and the pestilence. In estimating any scheme, we judge of it, not so much by particular parts, as by the manner in which it works. However it may come to pass, it is matter of experience that unmixed happiness is not to be found, and that there has been and still is an appalling amount of misery on this earth. Judging then from nature only, from the result, must not the conclusion be, that there must have been a deficiency either of power or of goodness, in that which was the origin of all things, whatever it may have been?

But if we reason with perfect strictness, we shall see that these beneficent contrivances may not have been the result of goodness. In order to this, we must make a distinction. between beneficence and goodness. The sun is beneficent; God is good. Goodness is the intentional production of happiness, but there may be beneficence or usefulness without this. The parent animal does many things which conduce to the comfort of its young, but no one supposes it to have goodness in the proper sense of the term. If there be an adaptive, necessitated, impersonal being, such as atheists mean by nature, its adaptations must tend to something, and why not to happiness as well as to any thing else? How can we know that these contrivances arise from any thing higher than that which causes the parent bird to build its nest and line it with soft feathers for its young? Nature the mother of all may be a beneficent instinct, and there exist no personal and good being.

We admit that when we follow the developement of con

trivance in nature, and observe the infinity of her resources, when we observe the simplicity of her plan, and the diversity of her operations, how perfectly she descends to the minute, and how easily she wields the vast, it would be natural to connect with the power working all this, the highest attributes of intelligence with which we are acquainted. To do this would be the eager aspiration of every heart rightly affected, but if what has been said be correct, logical accuracy does not compel the deduction, and the argument from design falls short of being a strict proof of the existence of a personal God. Contrivance manifested, no doubt proves a contriver, but this is by no means sufficient to furnish us with the elements of his character whom we adore as Lord of all.

The inquiry then naturally arises, whether we have such a formal proof as has been sought for in the argument from design. We think we have, though it seems to have been generally overlooked by writers on this subject. To attain this, neglecting the particular argument from design, we must press the more general one from cause to effect; we must carry it upward, not merely midway in the series of effects, but must make it comprise the highest and noblest of all known effects.

In doing this we remark, that as the eye beholds all things else, but is invisible to itself, so the mind which apprehends other things, too often overlooks and fails to consider itself as a part of that creation which it contemplates. In looking for the evidence of a creative mind, where should we expect to find it but in mind created? As Akenside says of beauty and sublimity,

"Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth and heaven,

The living fountain in itself contains

Of beauteous and sublime,"

so we say, that in created mind alone, do we find the highest and true evidence of mind uncreated. If mind be any thing distinct from matter, it is evident that it can be known only by itself; that the exercise of the faculties of mind is the only condition on which a knowledge of the attributes of mind can be obtained, the only condition on which mind can be conceived of or recognized, and that, consequently, if we have any knowledge of God as a mind, it must be derived, not from any thing ab extra, but from the conscious operation of our own minds. The fallacy by which we seem to

derive our notions of mind from without, is much like that by which we suppose the existence of color in the object. We see in external things, operations more or less resembling those which mind produces, and we suppose, that it is from those operations that our knowledge of the operating mind is obtained; whereas the recognition of any such operation as belonging to mind, supposes in us a similar previous operation with which we compare it, and without such previous operation in us from which we really obtain the idea, and by which we make the comparison, the knowledge of mind is impossible.

The brutes do not, and cannot know God, because they have in themselves, none of those elements which constitute his character as God, and man can only know him, in so far as he is made in the image of God, in respect to the kind of faculties which he possesses. Certainly it is only by the transference to God of the elements contained in our minds, that we can form any conception of him. If, therefore, there be any thing in reference to which we are not formed in the image of God, in respect to the kind of faculties which we possess, then, so far forth as those faculties exist in him, he is no God to us. As we can have no idea of the qualities of matter, except those derived from the senses which we possess, so we can have none of the attributes of mind, except those derived from our own mental powers. We can conceive of reason, of conscience, of free-will, of wisdom, and goodness, because we have the principles of these things in ourselves, and we can suppose them to be extended till they become infinite or perfect; but if, besides these and other powers which we may possess, there are in God still other perfections, we cannot conceive of them, they are to us as though they were not.

The above powers or attributes are those which chiefly go to form our idea of God, and without them he would not exist as God to us. But the idea of them is not derived to us from nature, in the usual sense of that term; they have nothing to do with contrivance; they come to us from the fact of the existence of our minds, and from the original, spontaneous operation of the faculties with which they are endowed. We might see nature move on forever, and not have the least idea of conscience or free-will, unless we found them existent in ourselves.

Let us suppose then two systems: the one containing

contrivance more perfect, if possible, than the present; the other, and we may suppose it, for we believe it to exist, consisting of minds disencumbered of matter, possessing spontaneous activity, thought, free-will, reason, conscience, judgment, affections. Each of these we suppose to be an effect. Which of them, we ask, would give the most decisive evidence of the existence, in its cause, of those attributes, the union of which, in one being, constitutes our idea of God, that which alone would be able to conceive of him, and would contain in itself faculties and powers similar to those which he possesses; or that which would not? The answer to this question cannot be doubtful. Strange indeed would it be, if the mind, in subserviency to which the body, with its contrivances, was evidently made, which alone can apprehend God, and exhibit godlike manifestations, should furnish less evidence of his existence than the contrivances made for its convenience. Mind, it is true, is not mechanism, it is not that we know it to be a contrivance in any proper sense of that term, but it is an effect, it is an effect sui generis, it is the highest of all known effects, and we may infer from it, in regard to its cause, what we can infer from no other of the works of God, even that he is not only "the Former of our bodies," but "the Father of our spirits." We see, therefore, that the existence of a created mind is not only the direct and proper evidence of a mind that created, but that it is the only condition on which the conception of such a mind can be formed, or the knowledge of it brought to light. We see, also, that all the important attributes of God, those without which he would not be God, are derived to us from the operations of our own faculties, and not at all from nature or contrivance. It would seem illogical, then, to say the least, to derive the chief, and indeed the only evidence for the existence of God, from that which may indeed be the consequence of his existence; but which does not contain or indicate the main elements in which his nature and character consist.

What, then, is the state of the argument from cause to effect? Taking along with us the principle that every event must have an adequate cause, our first assertion is that something now exists. This we prove, or rather it is self-evident, from the senses and from consciousness. The inference from this is, that something must have always existed, since no one supposes that something can come out of nothing

"Ex nihilo nihil fit." Something, then, having existed from eternity, we inquire what that is. Of the possibility that matter has always been, we need say nothing, but in examining its modifications, we find marks of design and matchless contrivance; there must, therefore, have been a contriver capable of adapting means to ends. But this power of contrivance being possessed by inferior animals, and the operations of nature being, moreover, in many respects, strikingly analogous to theirs, we do not yet find evidence of the higher and moral attributes of mind; or if we discover traces of wisdom and goodness, they are so obscure as to render it uncertain whether they exist, except by chance. We pass, therefore, entirely from matter and its modifications, to mind. Here we find, as an effect, all the attributes which we ascribe to God as a cause. Here we find personality-here the true evidence for the existence of a personal God. He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?

It only remains to show, and we may do it in a word, that the powers that cause the grass to spring, and uphold the order of the heavens, belong to the same being who created the mind, and who consequently possesses the highest intellectual and moral attributes of which we can conceive. The body of man is one of the productions of nature, is formed in like manner, and with like proofs of contrivance with its other parts. Of this, there can be no doubt. But the adaptation of the body to the mind, and their mutual action on each other, render it certain that one being was the author of both. It follows, of course, that he who made the human mind, and endowed it with its faculties, is possessed of those illimitable powers which carry on the course of nature, as well as of the highest possible attributes of intelligence.

This intelligence must of course be present in connection with those amazing powers, wherever, through the immensity of space, the operations of nature extend. We have, therefore, as the source of all things, as the principle of unity in all things, instead of a blind, unconscious principle, which general laws would seem to indicate, and which men call nature, or by whatever name pleases them, one, free, all-pervading, all-inspecting, all-comprehending, personal God, from whose presence we cannot escape, from whose spirit we cannot flee. We have also these