order, law, variety in constancy, and fixity in change; of relations of form and space, duration and succession, cause and consequence, among the objects which surround him; there springs up in his breast, unbidden and irresistibly, the thought of superintending intelligence, of a mind which comprehended from the first, and completely that which he late and partially comes to know? The worship of earth and sky, of the host of heaven and the influences of nature, is not the ultimate and fundamental fact in the history of the religious impressions of mankind. These are but derivative streams, impure and scanty, from the fountain of religious feeling which appears to be disclosed to us by the contemplation of the universe, as the seat of law and the manifestation of intellect. Time suggests to man the thought of eternity; space of infinity; law of intelligence; order of purpose; and however difficult and long a task it may be to develope these suggestions into clear convictions, these thoughts are the real parents of our natural religious belief. The only relation between true religion and the worship of the elemental world is, that the latter is the partial and gross perversion, the former the consistent and pure developement of the same original idea.

2. The connexion of the laws of the material world with an intelligence which preconceived and instituted the law, which is thus, as we perceive, so generally impressed on the common apprehension of mankind, has also struck no less those who have studied nature with a more systematic attention, and with the peculiar views which belong to science. The laws which such persons learn and study, seem, indeed, most naturally to lead to the conviction of an intelligence which originally gave to the law its form.

What we call a general law is, in truth, a form of expres sion including a number of facts of like kind. The facts arc separate; the unity of view by which we associate them, the character of generality and of law, resides in those relations which are the object of the intellect. The law once apprehended by us, takes in our minds the place of the facts themselves, and is said to govern or determine them, because it determines our anticipations of what they will be. But we cannot, it would seem, conceive a law, founded on such intelligible relations, to govern and determine the facts themselves, any otherwise than by supposing also an intelli

gence by which these relations are contemplated, and these consequences realized. We cannot then represent to ourselves the universe governed by general laws otherwise than by conceiving an intelligent and conscious Deity, by whom these laws were originally contemplated, established, and applied.

This perhaps will appear more clear, when it is considered that the laws of which we speak are often of an abstruse and complex kind, depending upon relations of space, time, number, and other properties, which we perceive by great attention and thought. These relations are often combined so variously and curiously, that the most subtle reasonings and calculations which we can form are requisite in order to trace their results. Can such laws be conceived to be instituted without any exercise of knowledge and intelligence? Can material objects apply geometry and calculation to themselves? Can the lenses of the eye, for instance, be formed and adjusted with an exact suitableness to their refractive powers, while there in the agency which framed them, no consciousness of the laws of light, of the course of rays, of the visible properties of things? This appears to te altogether inconceivable.

Every particle of matter possesses an almost endless train of properties, each acting according to its peculiar and fixed laws. For every atom of the same kind of matter these laws are invariably and perpetually the same, while for the different kinds of matter the difference of these properties is equally constant. This constant and precise resemblance, this variation equally constant and equally regular, suggest irresistibly the conception of some cause, independent of the atoms themselves, by which their similarity and dissimilarity, the agreement and difference of their deportment under the same circumstances have been determined. Such a view of the constitution of matter, as is observed by an eminent writer of our own time, effectually destroys the idea of its eternal and self-existent nature, "by giving to each of its atoms the essential characters, at once, of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent."*

That such an impresssion, and the consequent belief in a divine Author of the Universe, by whom its laws were or

• Herschel on the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 28.

dained and established, does result from the philosophical contemplation of nature, will, we trust, become still more evident by tracing the effect produced upon men's minds by the discovery of such laws and properties as those of which we have been speaking; and we shall therefore make a few observations on this subject.

CHAPTER V.

On Inductive Habits; or, on the Impression produced on Men's Minds by discovering Laws of Nature.

THE object of physical science is to discover such laws and properties as those of which we have spoken in the last chapter. In this task, undoubtedly a progress has been made on which we may well look with pleasure and admiration; yet we cannot hesitate to confess that the extent of our knowledge on such subjects bears no proportion to that of our ignorance. Of the great and comprehensive laws which rule over the widest provinces of natural phenomena, few have yet been disclosed to us. And the names of the philosophers, whose high office it has been to detect such laws, are even yet far from numerous. In looking back at the path by which science has advanced to its present position, we see the names of the great discoverers shine out like luminaries, few and scattered along the line: by far the largest portion of the space is occupied by those whose comparatively humble office is to verify, to develope, to apply the general truths which the discoverers brought to light.

It will readily be conceived that it is no easy matter, if it be possible, to analyse the process of thought by which laws of nature have thus been discovered; a process which, as we have said, has been in so few instances successfully performed. We shall not here make any attempt at such an analysis. But without this, we conceive it may be shown that the constitution and employment of the mind on which such discoveries depend, are friendly to that belief in a wise and good Creator and Governor of the world, which it has been our object to illustrate and confirm. And if it should

appear that those who see further than their fellows into the bearings and dependencies of the material things and ele ments by which they are surrounded, have also been, in almost every case, earnest and forward in acknowledging the relation of all things to a supreme intelligence and will; we shall be fortified in our persuasion that the true scientific perception of the general constitution of the universe, and of the mode in which events are produced and connected, is fitted to lead us to the conception and belief of God.

Let us consider for a moment what takes place in the mind of a stu lent of nature when he attains to the perception of a law previously unknown, connecting the appearances which he has studied. A mass of facts which before seemed incoherent and unmeaning, assume, on a sudden, the aspect of connexion and intelligible order. Thus, when Kepler discovered the law which connects the periodic times with the diameters of the planetary orbits; or, when Newton showed how this and all other known mathematical properties of the solar system were included in the law of universal gravitation according to the inverse square of the distance; particular circumstances which, before, were merely matter of independent record, became, from that time, indissolubly conjoined by the laws so discovered. The separate occurrences and facts, which might hitherto have seemed casual and without reason, were now seen to be all exemplifications of the same truth. The change is like that which takes place when we attempt to read a sentence written in difficult or imperfect characters. For a time the separate parts appear to be disjointed and arbitrary marks; the suggestions of possible meanings, which succeed each other in the mind, fail, as fast as they are tried, in combining or accounting for these symbols: but at last the true supposition occurs; some words are found to coincide with the meaning thus assumed; the whole line of letters appear to take definite shapes and to leap into their proper places;, and the truth of the happy conjecture seems to flash upon us from every part of the inscription.

The discovery of laws of nature, truly and satisfactorily connecting and explaining phenomena, of which, before, the connexion and causes had been unknown, displays much of a similar process, of obscurity succeeded by evidence, of effort and perplexity followed by conviction and repose.

The innumerable conjectures and failures, the glimpses of light perpetually opening and as often clouded over, the unwearied perseverance and inexhaustible ingenuity exercised by Kepler in seeking for the laws which he finally discovered, are, thanks to his communicative disposition, curiously exhibited in his works, and have been narrated by his biographers; and such efforts and alternations, modified by character and circumstances, must generally precede the detection of any of the wider laws and dependencies by which the events of the universe are regulated. We may readily conceive the satisfaction and delight with which, after this perplexity and struggle, the discoverer finds himself in light and tranquillity; able to look at the province of nature which has been the subject of his study, and to read there an intelligible connexion, a sufficing reason, which no one before him had understood or apprehended.

This step so much resembles the mode in which one intelligent being understands and apprehends the conceptions of another, that we cannot be surprised if those persons in whose minds such a process has taken place, have been most ready to acknowledge the existence and operation of a superintending intelligence, whose ordinances it was their employment to study. When they had just read a sentence of the table of the laws of the universe, they could not doubt whether it had had a legislator. When they had deciphered there a comprehensive and substantial truth, they could not believe that the letters had been thrown together by chance. They could not but readily acknowledge that what their faculties had enabled them to read, must have been written by some higher and profounder mind. And accordingly, we conceive it will be found, on examining the works of those to whom we owe our knowledge of the laws of nature, and especially of the wider and more comprehensive laws, that such persons have been strongly and habitually impressed with the persuasion of a Divine Purpose and Power which had regulated the events which they had attended to, and ordained the laws which they had detected.

To those who have pursued science without reaching the rank of discoverers;-who have possessed a derivative knowledge of the laws of nature which others had disclosed, and have employed themselves in tracing the consequences of such laws, and systematizing the body of truth thus pro