dence towards particular objects, are necessarily diminished in proportion to the enlargement of the field on which they are to be exercised. The one must always be in an inverse ratio to the other. This results from that most distinguishing difference which exists between the Divine and the human, the Infinite and the finite. Thought, knowlege, and ideas, are present to our minds by succession. With him " who filleth all things" it is directly the reverse. His care for any one object, and his personal agency in the production of any one result, cannot be at all diminished by his attention at the same moment to millions of similar objects, and similar agencies. It is therefore one of the most rigid conclusions of reason, flowing directly and irresistibly from the à priori idea of infinite perfection, that the most special Divine care of any, even the smallest, part of his works, is not in the least affected, diminished, or rendered incredible by the extent of the whole. In other words, if a certain exercise of a minute and particular providence, or moral legislation, toward our world would be perfectly credible, on the supposition that that one world was the whole of God's dominions; or to present the case in a still stronger light,-if a very high degree of the special care of the Deity towards one individual man, and of intense interest in his moral state and conduct, would be perfectly credible, on the supposition that that individual was alone with his Maker, the only subject of his natural and moral kingdom-then we say, that that credibility is not in the smallest particle diminished, and that care, and that special providence, and that moral superintendence would be none the less, when millions of other beings, and millions of other worlds and systems, with all their inhabitants, are discovered to be under the same government. What would be worthy of belief in the one case remains eqally worthy of belief in the other, and is not in an infinitesimal degree varied by the new and more enlarged aspect of the Divine Providence. This is as rigid and as irresistible a conclusion of right reason as any to be found in the mathematical sciences, and as long as reason alone is consulted the mind is steady, and no difficulty is felt.

Far different, however, is it when the matter is transferred from the reason to the imagination. It is then truly that

We turn our

we anthropomorphize. telescopes to the heavens and our microscopes to the earth. And as, in either extreme, worlds of life crowd into our dilated angle of vision, this weak faculty of the soul is overpowered, becomes astonished, and faints and staggers under the boundless prospect. In its feebleness, however, it assumes the airs of philosophy, arrays itself in the robes of its strong brother, Reason, and wonders at the narrow views of those who can believe that the Deity is personally engaged in such "paltry exercises” as the direct origination of the lower forms of animal life.

Now, notwithstanding all his parade of reason and science, it is to this weak and lower faculty of the soul that the author actually, although perhaps unconsciously, addresses himself. "How can we suppose," says this man of enlarged and elevated views, "an immediate exertion of this creative power to produce zoophytes, &c. ?" In another place, he has a like difficulty in respect to the hydatid (which, for the sake of our unscientific readers, may be explained as meaning the small animated vesicle that produces the measles in swine), and he asks with all earnestness, and as though the inquiry could not fail effectually to gravel every obstinate opponent, Whence came this hydatid? He is in the same distress about the tineæ and the pymelodes Cyclopum. To regard the original production of any of these inferior beings as proceeding from any immediate act, would be “ taking a very mean view of creative power." But why? Let us examine the author's own hypothesis, and see if he is consistent even with himself.

These zoophytes and hydatids and tineæ must each have had something representing them in this vast and compli cated system of media, some little cog or spring in some little wheel concealed for ages in some greater wheel,-some hidden apparatus, which, although actually existing, remains outwardly inert, until the time comes and the conditions are brought about for the production of these new species of life. All this time, we say, the zoophytes and hydatid must have been in the machine as much as the earth or the sun. If this is simply the result of the inherent, necessary, and eternal laws of matter, without any higher agency, let the author say so, and be consistent. But if thereis this higher

or Divine agency, then it follows that provision must have been made by it for these cases in the orginating act or development. Besides all this, there is required an additional agency in preserving these hidden and inoperative parts until the conditions are fulfilled for their outward action; for the author says that "the Divine power is never absent from a particle of the current of affairs, but that the whole system is continually supported by his providence;" and we must be so charitable as to suppose that he means something by this, however much we may be puzzled to understand what possible place this presence, or this providence, can have in his theory of eternal developments. Now, where is the economy of means produced by this labor-saving machine? If God did not directly make the hydatid he made the media which were to produce that result, and that, too, in such a way, that for every effect, and every part of every effect; there must have been something corresponding in the cause. Away back, then, at the very commencement of eternity, there must have been made, in the originating development, the same provision for the zoophyte and tinea, as though the Deity, according to "the conception of those humble intellects" worked in particular ways for particular occasions. Surely it is no more "a paltry exercise of creative power" to make hydatids directly than to create archetypes of hydatids; to make use of the term employed by our author in his absurd misconception of the philosophy of Plato. Surely those who thus reason must imagine the Deity "altogether such an one as themselves."

This whole doctrine of machinery comes from the grossest anthropomorphism. We mean, when it is regarded as a necessary medium and essential in itself to the Divine operations. We all admit-the most humble Sabbath scholar knows as well as our author, that God does use general methods styled laws or media; but, as we have stated before, the view which regards them as used for our sakes and for the sake of other rational beings, as indicia of the Divine operations, for the regulation of human conduct, for the purpose of furnishing to us the grounds of practical science, and as having a moral end in view even when suspended-in short, as something wholly subordinate to a moral system, and which the Deity has at times laid aside and

can lay aside whenever he pleases,—this view, we say, presents a very different doctrine from the one with which we are contending. The hypothesis of our author regards them as necessary to God himself and as required for the preservation of his dignity. Now this we charge as being the very lowest form of anthropomorphism. We ourselves, it is true, perform many operations much more easily by machinery than by direct personal exertion: but in such cases nothing can be more evident than that we employ means external to ourselves and prepared to our hands. When we make use of wind, or water, or steam, or gravitation, or mechanical power, we do nothing else than commit ourselves to the Divine agencies, and thus, to us, Nature becomes a labor-saving machine; but how low that view, and " how unreasoning that mind" which is led to conclude that such a process of external media is necessary for the Divine ease or essential to the Divine dignity. Most truly and forcibly does the declaration of Scripture continually come to mind in the contemplation of all such speculations" Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." In respect to the Deity, too, machinery cannot, as with us, be external to himself. Whether a material or an immaterial agency it must be created, or rather, on this system, developed out of his own nature. It must be, likewise, a machinery containing the most minute provisions for every event which is to form a part of the great series of developments, and for every part of that event, and for all its collaterals, and for all things leading to it, and for all their collaterals, as particularly and specifically as though each part were formed just at the very time when it was required to be brought into being. If, instead of employing the natural media furnished to our hand, we had to create and keep in existence the force of water, air, and steam, it would soon be found that the direct exertion of our own muscular strength would be the simplest, easiest, and most labor-saving process we could employ.

We cannot help adverting, in this connection, to a very singular statement which the author makes, page 150. "After what we have seen," he says, "the idea of a separate exertion for each (form of life) must appear totally inadmissible. The single fact of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for these, on such a

supposition, could be regarded in no other light than as blemishes or blunders-the thing, of all others, most irreconcilable with the idea of Almighty perfection. On the other hand, when the organic creation is admitted to have been effected by a general law, we see nothing in these abortive parts, but harmless peculiarities of development, and interesting evidences of the manner in which the divine author has been pleased to work." Now can any thing be more absurd than this? What must we think of the commendations which have every where been bestowed upon the logic of one who reasons in this manner? Can anything be more intuitively certain than that every physical effect, and every part of every physical effect, must find an exact correspondent in its immediate cause, and that cause, in like manner, in its own antecedent, and so on, as long as the chain of agency continues? Without, therefore, stopping to discuss the question whether there are any physical blemishes in the universe, or any apparent physical disorders which God did not design for some higher moral end, and which are, therefore, not disorders, we ask whether a blemish in the effect does not necessarily imply a blemish somewhere in the cause, until we ascend to the first originating development; and how, in the name of common sense, can there be any difference, in this case, whether the agency be mediate or immediate, since it must certainly be immediate in some stage of the process? Has the architect of a machine any right to excuse himself by attributing a blemish or bungle in its work to an imperfect wheel, or to a defective spring, or a misplaced cog? Can we justify the printer, by imputing the blame of a mistake to a wrong position of the types, or a defect in the press? How much more justly, then, if there are physical blemishes in the creation-by which we mean real mistakes, and not apparent evils, actually designed in reference to moral ends-must they be charged upon the power which not simply employs, but has actually created, or, if you please, developed all the materials, energies and qualities of the very machinery through which the blemish is produced.

But we would dwell no longer on this. All that we style the laws of nature must either be necessary and inherent properties of matter-or they must be something immaterial, yet apart from a Deity who employs them, and can give them a substantive existence separate from himself

or they must be invisible spiritual agencies-or they are only convenient names for the direct yet regular action of Divine power in every case. The first is unqualified atheism. The second is incomprehensible. The two last are both properly consistent with a moral government, and with the declarations of the Scripture. But the doctrine of machinery, as machinery, necessary for the Divine operations in themselves, and essential to the Divine dignity, is the sheerest anthropomorphism, into which a pretended philosophy, in its insane attempt to avoid the recognition of a personal God, has ever fallen.

Let us lay the Scriptures entirely out of the question, and confine ourselves to the most rigid induction from present and known phenomena. Let this induction be carried on according to the strictest Baconian rules. We believe that on such a process, almost all sober scientific men, who are really such, would arrive at one and the same conclusion. The only theory which would embrace all the facts, and account for all the phenomena, would be this-namely, that our earth had been the theatre of two distinct kinds of causes, and of two distinct agencies. The one would be a series of regular, gradual, long continued influences, between which an apparent mutual dependence and interdependence could be traced, like links in a chain. The other would present features, no less manifest, of sudden, violent, disconnected, and apparently irregular agencies, breaking up abruptly the continuity of the former, ending old epochs that had been marked by long periods of these slow, uniform progressions, and introducing other dispensations and other forms of life destined to fall again under that same connected chain of gradual workings, which, from the regularity of sequence, we call law, cause and effect. Now, if we style the first class of agencies natural, which is a very good name, the most appropriate title for the other would be supernatural-indicating a power above nature, breaking up, or changing, or suspending natural laws for higher purposes, at the close of old and the introduction of new dispensations; one of which higher purposes may be to prevent rational beings from falling into an atheistical habit of thinking, and to startle them back again into the almost vanished belief that there is a God behind the screen of nature. Now if any man will be so perverse as to call this class of phenomena by the

same name with the first, and to consider them all alike as the results of hidden laws; if he will envelope everything in that unmeaning word development; if he will use the terms First Cause, originating vital power, &c., for God, and employ the word law for all the Divine operations of every kind, be they ordinary or extraordinary; if he will thus confound all language, the office of which is to distinguish things that differ; if he will by such a course utterly annihilate true science, notwithstanding the exclusive claims he advances to its possession -all that we can say is, that such a one should not complain if the ruling principle of his life is suspected to be an utter aversion to the recognition of a personal God, nor think himself unjustly treated when his system is declared to be atheism, sheer atheism, dark, chilly, soulless atheism.

While on this part of the work, we cannot help devoting a short space to another egregious fallacy for which the author brings the support of Mr. Babbage in one of the Bridgewater Treatises—a series of works, by the way, which we verily believe have made more infidels than they have ever cured. If we understand him aright, he would illustrate his doctrine of developments by the following supposition. An arithmetical machine is imagined, so constructed, that a wheel revolving round an axis presents successively to the eye a series of numbers engraved on its divided circumference. "Let the figures thus seen," says Mr. Babbage, "be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c." How long, (he asks,) would the operation be witnessed before the observer would think he recognized the existence of a law, by virtue of which each succeeding number exceeds the one preceding by unity? This process is supposed to go on until we reach 100,000,000. True to this vast induction," says the contriver of this machine, "the next number will be 100,000,001; but the next presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being 100,000,002, is 100,010,002, at which point the law seems to change, and every succeeding number exceeds its predecessor by ten thousand." 66 The principle which seems at first to govern," says the author, "fails at the one hundred million and second term, and a new order takes its place." "If now," he proceeds, "we continue to observe the numbers presented, we shall find that for a hundred or even a thou

sand terms, they continue to follow the new law; but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find that it fails in the case of the two thousand seven hundred sixty-second. Then comes a new law continuing through about 1430 terms, when it gives place to another, &c. &c. &c." (See page 157, 158.) On first reading this, we were for some time puzzled to know what application could possibly be made of it. Any one can see, at a glance, that as far as the construction of the machine is concerned, the whole process is entirely arbitrary. Af ter presenting numbers increasing by unity up to 100,000,001, the next presented is suddenly 100,010,002, simply because it was placed next on the rim of the machine. As far as the idea of law is concerned, (we mean the law of the machine irrespective of any laws of numbers, which are in all cases necessary laws,) it might as well have been kept in the hands of the maker, and dropped into its proper place at the very time it was wanted, and so of all the other changes, or developments, as the author would style them. We discover nothing here like law, which always implies some relations of antecedent and consequents, and where, of course, something of the effect must be seen in the cause to make the links continuous. But it cannot be pretended that any of these sudden changes are in any way to be regarded as regular functions of any of the preceding terms, or combinations of terms.

We are asked to take this as a good illustration of this theory of developments, or what are styled sudden transitions to higher states of being. For example, a certain species of vegetation, after having for one hundred million and one times produced its like, is by virtue of a hidden law contained in its organization, but all this time concealed and inert, suddenly developed into a new species in the first stage of animal life;" a process by which," says our author, the whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are to be regarded as a series of advances of this principle of development." In this way the plant becomes an animal, the reptile a fish, the fish an inhabitant of the dry ground, and terrestrial animals rise in the ascending scale, until the development reaches the Simia tribe. From this the machine goes on, age after age, apes begetting apes, each one in his own likeness and after his own kind, until at

last some one revolution of the wheel brings everything into that state in which the conditions are fulfilled;"-the hidden spring is touched; the monkey loses his tail, and man comes out No. 2762. Oh, shade of Moses! We cannot help apostrophising thy meek spirit, thou ancient man of God! Is it for this that we are called upon, in the nineteenth century, to reject that sublime account, the superhuman grandeur and simplicity of which furnish evidence that thou couldst have derived it only from the voice of inspiration?-And God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them; and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Now, we ask again, what is gained by all this? The vegetable, reptile, fish, monkey, and man, must have been all in the primal development, and they must have each required a special provision corresponding to every variety and change of their being. The numbers must all have been placed on the circumference of the revolving wheel so as to come out in the actual order. Each subsequent form of life must have been particularly represented in each prior development; and then again, what is saved on the score of economy of means? Why not the man directly without the monkey? The only answer is, that there is a spurious philosophy, whose chief element is a most hearty and yet, it may be, unconscious dislike of the idea of a personal Deity. If it cannot bear the name of atheism, it at least wishes a God afar off;—anything but an everpresent, ever-energizing, ever-watchful moral governor.

What makes all this most odious to those acquainted with the history of philosophy, is the fact, that it is one of the oldest of errors dressed up in the guise of modern science. The ancient atheists were full of it as far as its elementary principles are concerned, although differing in immaterial details. It forms the very substance of the philosophy of Epicurus, and the Latin atheist Lucretius abounds with it ad nauseam.

Man our author regards as but the initial of a grand crowning type. The present race is only performing the office of the simia or monkey tribe in the development of some nobler species. We must expect that there will be higher varieties of the being homo, as well as of the hydatid and tinea. This is what the

It

writer calls a startling idea,-a phrase which is a great favorite with this whole class of thaumaturgic, or wonder-making sciolists. The reader might indeed be startled by this, and regard it as springing from a desire to make atonement, by the hopes of future greatness, for the disparagement cast upon our origin. looks something like the doctrine of future existence, and may possibly recognize the humble claim of the Scriptures to teach something on this head, without violating the higher prerogatives of natural science. But no-he means no such thing. Be quiet, individual reader! You are altogether too small and too insignificant to indulge in any such lofty aspi rations. Let us read farther. "It is clear," says our author, page 181-" it is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural laws, that the individual, as far as the present sphere of being is concerned, is to the Author of nature a consideration of inferior moment. Everywhere we see the arrangements for the species perfect; the individual is left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the mêlée of the various laws affecting him. If ill befalls him, there was at least no partiality against him. "The system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every one has the like chance of drawing a prize." In the above extract the author uses the qualifying words, "as far as the present state of being is concerned," but nothing can be clearer than that they are inconsistent with the entire argument. No reason can be assigned why this system of law and developments should not be carried throughout all existence. In such a scheme the individual must everywhere be comparatively of no impor tance. The parts are all for the whole, and the whole in no sense for the parts; whereas in a true system of philosophy, this second position would be recognized as strongly as the first, and both maintained in harmonious consistency. We must give way simply because higher species need the space we occupy. must die, not for the reason which the Scriptures assign, but that future geologists of a superior order may find in our decayed fossil remains the grounds of a higher science, and evidences of a farther progress in this infinite series of developments. What strange aversion to an individual future state, and to a personal God, must be at the bottom of a philosophy so utterly repulsive as this, and which sends such a chill of death over

We