REFLECTIONS ON THE BEING OF A GOD.
RETIRE; the world shut out;-thy thoughts call home ;
Imagination's airy wing repress ;
Lock up thy senses; let no passions stir :
Wake all to reason :-let her reign alone :
Then in my soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of Nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire-
What am I? and from whence? nothing know
But that I am; and since 1 am, conclude
Something eternal: had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been: eternal there must be.-
But what eternal? Why not human race?
And Adam's ancestors without an end?-
That's hard to be conceiv'd, since every link
Of that long-chain'd succession is so frail.
Can every part depend, and not the whole?
Yet grant it true, new difficulties rise;
I'm still quite out at sea, nor see the shore.
Whence earth, and these bright orbs?-Eternal too?
Grant matter was eternal, still these orbs
Would want some other father;-much design
Is seen in all their motions, all their makes,
Design implies intelligence and art;
They can't be from themselves-or man: that art
Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow?
And nothing greater yet allowed than man.-
Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain,
Shot thro' vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bade brute matter's restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?
Has matter innate motion? then each atom,
Asserting its indisputable right
To dance, would form an universe of dust:
Has matter none? Then whence these glorious forms,
And boundless flights, from shapeless and reposed?
Has matter more than motion? has it thought,
Judgment, and genius? is it deeply learned
In mathematics? has it fram'd such laws,
Which but to guess, a Newton made immortal?—
If art to form, and counsel to conduct,
And that which greater far than human skill,
Resides not in each block,-a Godhead reigns,-
And, if a God there is,-that God how great!
I SOUGHT Thee round about, O thou my God!