matics, in the physical and abstract sciences generally, since the commencement of the last century; metaphysics too have been sedulously, if not successfully cultivated by men of the highest talents, yet no fresh light has been thrown upon these facts, as applied to ethics and natural theology. Facts, however, are abundantly and obviously scattered around us, that demonstrate the infinite power, and wisdom and benevolence of the Deity; but we search in vain, far and near, for phenomena that incontestably prove his personal and providential care of individuals, a judicial superintendence and process, the mind immortal, or a future state. Newton or Laplace may conduct us through boundless space and show us the handywork of one Almighty artificer in the symmetry, and order and co-relation of systems inconceivable in their magnitude, their multiplicity and distance; or we may mount up with Cuvier and Buckland through millions of centuries past and gone, when this earth had no living creature on its surface, and trace the various successions of animals to our own hour, and yet no fact involving any new and undiscovered principle will meet us. The indications of divine power and wisdom, indeed are diversified and multiplied ad infinitum, but they lead us not beyond those truths which a more limited observation and less ambitious inquiry-an examination of objects within the sphere of natural vision, and the consideration of our own organs, had enabled the earliest reasoners to discover, and which Aristotle has so well expressed, according to the interpretation of Cicero. "Si essent, inquit, qui sub terrâ "semper habitavissent.... accepissent autem famâ et auditione "esse quoddam numen et vim deorum; deinde aliquo tempore, patefactis terræ faucibus, in hæc loca, quæ nos incolimus, "exire potuissent; cum repente terram et maria, cœlumque "videssent, nubium magnitudinem, ventorumque vim cog"novissent, aspexissentque solem, ejusque tum magnitudinem, "pulchritudinemque, tum etiam efficentiam cognovissent.... "Cum autem terras nox opacasset, tum cœlum totum cernerent "astris distinctum et ornatum, lunæque luminum varietatem

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tum crescentis, tum senescentis, eorumque omnium ortus et "occasus, atque in omni ætate ratos immutabilesque cursus; "hæc cum viderent, profecto et esse deos, et hæc tanta

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opera esse deorum arbitrarentur*." Nor were the ancient philosophers more at a loss than we, to ascertain both the efficient and final cause of the constitution of the universe, and of our own frame in particular, both physical and intellectual. "Sic undique omni ratione concluditur, mente consilioque "divino omnia in hoc mundo ad salutem omnium conser"vationemque admirabiliter administrari†.”

If then we are to make progress in the science of theology, it must be under the direction of the great Being who is the object of our speculations. Baffled and frustrated as all

merely human efforts have been to discover the attributes, the counsels and designs of our Maker, except as far as they are presented to our organs of sense, we ought at least to learn sufficient humility to be willing to listen if we are taught, and to give a fair hearing to a communication which imports to have a divine authority, and which professes to establish that authority on satisfactory evidence.

Now we are persuaded that the evidence in favour of the Christian revelation is of sufficient weight to give satisfaction to an unprejudiced and humble inquirer. Its historical authenticity stands upon an immoveable, we will not say unassailable, basis. But the Christian Scriptures are as well attested to have been written by the disciples and companions of Jesus Christ, as Clarendon's History and Sully's Memoirs to have been written by ministers and companions of Charles I. and Henry IV. It is true that if inquirers approach the investigation with certain preconceived ideas of what is right for God to say or do, founded upon arguments à priori-if with Bolingbroke and Hume they persuade themselves that God will never suspend any of his own mechanical laws; never work a miracle, nor ever think such creatures as men worth a separate and especial consideration, either for punishment or reward, such conviction will not ensue. There is an invincible barrier to it, set up in the mind of the inquirer. It is evident to any careful reader of these two sceptical writers, that such were the barriers that obstructed their belief. For both of

Cic. De Nat. Deor. lib. 2. c. 92.

+ Idem.

them admit the strength of the historical proof in so many words, and in fact admit its irrefragability, for they elude its force, by affirming that no human testimony is sufficient to verify a miracle, because, say they, it is "repugnant" and "contradictory to experience." This however is manifestly an assumption, which no knowledge they can have of the deity à priori can authorise them to make, and has been most satisfactorily confuted by Paley, and still more stringently by Lord Brougham*. It speaks no little in favour of the firmness and perfection of the external defence, that it has been diligently and repeatedly reconnoitred by the keen and inquisitive eyes, and battered by the powerful artillery of Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon and Voltaire, and yet no practicable breach made, no weak place discovered, through which a decisively successful assault could be made and the structure demolished.

We do not advise the students of revelation to adopt the insidious advice of these opponents-that they should neither attempt to "prove" or even "defend" their cause by "reason," because it may be often necessary to meet and repel the enemy on his own ground. But we would counsel them for their own behoof to advance just so far in natural theology as a fair induction of well ascertained facts will conduct them and no farther. At that point let them, by strict inquiry into the evidence of the Christian revelation, satisfy themselves of its truth; then, and not before, lend themselves with becoming docility to its guidance, and take from it the solution of those important questions which no human reasoning or sagacity is capable of determining, but which no reflecting mind can be well content to leave undetermined.

Discourse of Natural Theology.

END OF VOL. IV.

LONDON:

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