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 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 assist 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.

III. 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.

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Thus, in the observations on the nature of the Deity Iwith 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 everywhere. 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 the motions of 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
Lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra,
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet:

warning his reader, however, against the doctrine which such expressions as these are sometimes understood to

express: "All these things he rules, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord of all."

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 cause 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,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent."

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, they may be susceptible of a more favourable construction; and we may 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.

* Phil. of Act. and Moral Powers, i. 373.

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 immediate 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 was discredited by the patronage of Malebranche 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."

CHAP. 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. If 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