reach of our observation, contribute to give a strength and permanency to our impression of the attributes, proportioned to the frequent occasions by which it is confirmed. The occasions indeed are limited only by the extent of our observations upon the animate and inanimate, the rational and irrational creation. From a subject so inexhaustible, and widening daily with the increase of knowledge and research, every individual must select the proof which strikes his own mind most forcibly. With respect to the power, indeed, of the Creator, there is little room for such selection. The minutest created object displays power as inconceivable to our capacities as the creation of a system. The wonders which astronomy unfolds to our contemplation, of world beyond world, extending into immeasurable space, and filling our imagination with the idea of numerous ranks of beings, the probable inhabitants of those worlds, are often set before us as calculated to raise the sublimest apprehensions of the power of the Creator. But I con ceive that the fact of the creation being once proved, the power of the Creator is proved along with it; and that no person ever granted the one, and denied the other. power, Passing over therefore the attribute of as implied in the act of creation, I shall bestow my principal attention on the wisdom and goodness of the Deity; and the more willingly, because many who have given their assent to the power displayed in the creation, have refused it to the moral attribute of goodness, altogether; and have alleged many insulated appearances which are supposed to be inconsistent with infinite wisdom. CHAPTER I. On the Wisdom of the Creator. WHEN We desire to form an estimate of any extraordinary degree of power, or knowledge, or wisdom, we are led by a habit almost instinctive to compare the object proposed to us with our own powers, under similar circumstances, and to judge of its extent by the degree of difference resulting from such a comparison. The same principle must be pursued, in order to communicate to our limited faculties any idea of the wisdom of the Creator. The utmost elevation which the human mind can attain stops infinitely short of the absolute omniscience of the Deity. The only notion we can form upon the subject is relative; by taking the highest aim and object of human wisdom as a basis, and, with this in view, contemplating the vast provisions and simple execution, which the general laws that regulate the natural and moral world unfold to our observation. I shall attempt to illustrate this view of the subject by a few particular instances; which will prove, if just, that both in the constitution of the universe, and in the laws which respect peculiarly the human race, the Deity has shown the most comprehensive and prospective wisdom. Confessedly, the highest aim of philosophical theory is to account for the phænomena it treats of by the fewest possible principles; and the great ambition of human art, practically exerted, is to attain the end proposed by the least complicated means. To contrive that the same machinery should execute various purposes, and contribute by one operation to the different exigencies of the manufacture, is the summit of our ingenuity, the result of a length of time, numerous trials, and numerous disappointments. According to this test then, which our own efforts confess to be the highest, I proceed to examine the wisdom of the Creator. We are sufficiently acquainted with the mechanism of the natural world, to form some notion of the universality of the laws which accomplish the most immense purposes. With respect to the system at large of which our globe constitutes a comparatively inconsiderable part, one principle of gravitation preserves the planets in their orbits, and determines the descent of the most trifling body to the ground. In proportion as researches into the planetary system have penetrated deeper, which have now ended in the complete developement of the Newtonian theory; in that proportion has the provision been more and more clearly unfolded, that, by an obedience originally prescribed to this single and universal law, not only the motions of the different bodies composing the system are regulated, but their aberrations and eccentricities are adjusted and corrected, and the permanence of the system |