and made all their subsequent combinations and relations inevitable consequences of this first impression."* 2. This, which thus appears to be the mode of the Deity's operation in the material world, requires some attention on our part in order to understand it with proper clearness. One reason of this is, that it is a mode of operation altogether different from that in which we are able to make matter fulfil our designs. Man can construct exquisite ma chines, can call in vast powers, can form extensive combinations, in order to bring about results which he has in view. But in all this he is only taking advantage of laws of nature which already exist: he is applying to his use qualities which matter already possesses. Nor can he by any effort do more. He can establish no new law of na ture which is not a result of the existing ones. He can invest matter with no new properties which are not modifications of its present attributes. His greatest advances in skill and power are made when he calls to his aid forces which before existed unemployed, or when he discovers so much of the habits of some of the elements as to be able to bend them to his purpose. He navigates the ocean by the assistance of the winds which he cannot raise or still: and even if we suppose him able to control the course of these, his yet unsubjugated ministers, this could only be done by studying their characters, by learning more thoroughly the laws of air and heat and moisture. He cannot give the minutest portion of the atmosphere new relations, a new course of expansion, new laws of motion. But the Divine operations, on the other hand, include something much higher. They take in the establishment of the laws of the elements, as well as the combination of these laws and the determination of the distribution and quantity of the materials on which they shall produce their effect. We must conceive that the Supreme Power has ordained that air shall be rarefied, and water turned into vapour, by heat; no less than that he has combined air and water so as to sprinkle the earth with showers, and determined the quantity of heat and air and water, so that the showers shall be as beneficial as they are. We may and must, therefore, in our conceptions of the * Herschel on the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 28. Divine purpose and agency, go beyond the analogy of human contrivances. We must conceive the Deity, not only as constructing the most refined and vast machinery, with which, as we have already seen, the universe is filled; but we must also imagine him as establishing those properties by which such machinery is possible: as giving to the materials of his structure the qualities by which the material is fitted to its use. There is much to be found, in natural objects, of the same kind of contrivance which is common to these and to human inventions; there are mechanical devices, operations of the atmospheric elements, chemical processes; many such have been pointed out, many more exist. But besides these cases of the combination of means, which we seem able to understand without much difficulty, we are led to consider the Divine Being as the author of the laws of chemical, of physical, and of mechanical action, and of such other laws as make matter what it is;-and this is a view which no analogy of human inventions, no knowledge of human powers, at all assists us to embody or understand. Science, therefore, as we have said, while it discloses to us the mode of instrumentality employed by the Deity, convinces us, more effectually than ever, of the impossibility of conceiving God's actions by assimilating them to our own. 3. The laws of material nature, such as we have described them, operate at all times, and in all places; affect every province of the universe, and involve every relation of its parts. Wherever these laws appear, we have a manifestation of the intelligence by which they were established. But a law supposes an agent, and a power; for it is the mode according to which the agent proceeds, the order according to which the power acts. Without the presence of such an agent, of such a power, conscious of the relations on which the law depends, producing the effects which the law prescribes, the law can have no efficacy, no existence. Hence we infer that the intelligence by which the law is ordained, the power by which it is put in action, must be present at all times and in all places where the effects of the law occur; that thus the knowledge and the agency of the Divine Being pervade every portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence and change. The laws of nature are the laws which he, in his wisdom, prescribes to his own acts; his universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events, his universal agency the only origin of any efficient force. This view of the relation of the universe to God has been entertained by many of the most eminent of those who have combined the consideration of the material world with the contemplation of God himself. It may therefore be of use to illustrate it by a few quotations, and the more so as we find this idea remarkably dwelt upon in the works of that writer whose religious views must always have a peculiar interest for the cultivators of physical science, the great Newton. Thus, in the observations on the nature of the Deity with which he closes the "Opticks," he declares the various portions of the world, organic and inorganic, "can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever living Agent, who being in all places, is more able by his will to move the bodies within his boundless uniform sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the parts of the universe, than we are by our will to move the parts of our own bodies." And in the Scholium at the end of the "Principia," he says, "God is one and the same God always and every where. He is omnipresent, not by means of his virtue alone, but also by his substance, for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In him all things are contained, and move, but without mutual passion; God is not acted upon by motions of the bodies; and they suffer no resistance from the omnipresence of God." And he refers to several passages confirmatory of this view, not only in the Scriptures, but also in writers who hand down to us the opinions of some of the most philosophical thinkers of the pagan world. He does not disdain to quote the poets, and among the rest, the verses of Virgil: Principio cœlum ac terras camposque liquentes warning his reader, however, against the doctrine which such expressions as these are sometimes understood to ex. press. "All these things he rules, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord of all.” Р Clarke, the friend and disciple of Newton, is one of those who has most strenuously put forwards the opinion of which we are speaking, "All things which we commonly say are the effects of the natural powers of matter and laws of motion, are indeed (if we will speak strictly and properly,) the effects of God's acting upon matter continually and at every moment, either immediately by himself, or mediately by some created intelligent being. Consequently there is no such thing as the course of nature, or the power of nature," independent of the effects produced by the will of God. Dugald Stewart has adopted and illustrated the same opinion, and quotes with admiration the well known passage of Pope, concerning the Divine Agency, which "Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Mr. Stewart, with no less reasonableness than charity, asserts the propriety of interpreting such passages according to the scope and spirit of the reasonings with which they are connected; since, though by a captious reader they might be associated with erroneous views of the Deity, a more favourable construction will often see in them only the results of the necessary imperfection of our language, when we dwell upon the omnipresence and universal activity of God. Finally, we may add that the same opinions still obtain the assent of the best philosophers and divines of our time. Sir John Herschel says, (Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 37.) "We would no way be understood to deny the constant exercise of His direct power in maintaining the system of nature; or the ultimate emanation, of every energy which material agents exert, from his immeate will, acting in conformity with his own laws." And the Bishop of London, in a note to his "Sermon on the duty of combining religious instruction with intellectual culture," observes, "the student in natural philosophy will find rest from all those perplexities which are occasioned by the obscurity of causation, in the supposition, which although it • Elem. of Phil. ii. p. 273. was discredited by the patronage of Mallebranche and the Cartesians, has been adopted by Clarke and Dugald Stewart, and which is by far the most simple and sublime account of the matter; that all the events, which are continually taking place in the different parts of the material universe, are the immediate effects of the divine agency." CHAPTER IX. On the Impression produced by considering the Nature and Prospects of Science; or, on the Impossibility of the Progress of our Knowledge ever enabling us to comprehend the Nature of the Deity. Ir we were to stop at the view presented in the last chapter, it might be supposed that-by considering God as eternal and omnipresent, conscious of all the relations, and of all the objects of the universe, instituting laws founded on the contemplation of these relations, and carrying these laws into effect by his immediate energy, we had attained to a conception, in some degree definite, of the Deity, such as natural philosophy leads us to conceive him. But by resting in this mode of conception, we should overlook, or at least should disconnect from our philosophical doctrines, all that most interests or affects us in the character of the Creator and Preserver of the world;-namely, that he is the lawgiver and judge of our actions; the proper object of our prayer and adoration; the source from which we may hope for moral strength here, and for the reward of our obedience and the elevation of our nature in another state of existence. We are very far from believing that our philosophy alone can give us such assurance of these important truths as is requisite for our guidance and support; but we think that even our physical philosophy will point out to us the necessity of proceeding far beyond that conception of God, which represents him merely as the mind in which reside all the contrivance, law, and energy of the material world. We believe that the view of the universe which modern science |