produced by a long previously arranged consortment of means or causes. For example, the crop which the cultivated ground yields is the result of a vast number of preparations, human and Divine too, made long before. It is the peculiarity of the Divine workmanship that we can see in it a set of causes so ordered that they can produce a series or succession of orderly and benign resulfs going on from age to age. The plants and animals now on the earth have all proceeded from progenitors created many thousand years ago, and which were so constituted as to produce an offspring after their kind. To argue from the succession of such effects that they are not designed, is to make the very beauty and perfection of the work a proof that it has not proceeded from an intelligent being.

Nor is the force of the argument to be weakened by the attempt to discover an alleged contradiction; if everything, it is said, comes from God, there can be nothing casual, there is no room for chance, and therefore no room for design as distinguished from chance. Now, it is at once admitted that every physical occurrence may be regarded as proceeding from God; at this point, that is, in regard to the production of the event, there is no room for accident. But while every event comes from God, this does not prove that the coincidences between every two events were designed by Him to produce a specific end. God has no doubt appointed both the eclipse and plague which may have happened the same year, but this does not prove that He designed the one dark event to foreshadow the other. As there may be casual relations in nature, so there may be, so there are, in nature designed concurrences, as distinguished from accidental coincidences. All that is now occurring is. doubtless the result of collocations previously made, and

in tracing it back we must come to certain original collocations. At this point physical research stops, but all inquiry is not arrested. The mind asks, whence this systematic collocation of agents and forces which has produced such good and useful results for thousands, or it may be, millions of years? The present so full of order carries us back to the past as also full of order, and shews that the system now in operation had been planned from the beginning.

Still less is the force of the argument to be evaded by the miserable subterfuge of certain French materialists, who tell us that this consorting of means and end is the mere condition of existence. When it is found, for example, that certain independent members of carnivorous animals are in admirable harmony, the limbs for running after the prey, the claws for seizing it, the muscles for keeping hold of it, the teeth for tearing it, and the stomach for digesting it, an attempt is made to avoid the force of the appeal by urging that these are the conditions of the existence of the animal. True, we reply, but the argument is derived from the circumstance that these independent conditions should meet so as to enable the animal to exist and to enjoy existence. He who brings in the principle of the conditions of existence will find it, if legitimately followed out, landing him in a designing intelligence no less certainly than the principle of final cause does. The argument, whether for or against theism, is not to be made to depend on a word or the shifting of a word. It is not to be established on the one. side by a verbal sophism about design implying a designer, but neither is its overwhelming force to be turned aside by changing the word final cause for conditions of existence. It seems that conditions are necessary to certain existences, and it is the concurrence of these condi

tions, proceeding from various and independent quarters, which proves so irresistibly that there must have been design in their arrangement and collocation.

SECT. III.-THE OBVIOUSNESS AND COMPLETENESS OF THE SPECIAL ADAPTATIONS.

The argument from adaptation to a particular end is one which addresses itself to every human being. It is suited to every intellect, and comes home to every man's experience.

1. Every manual labourer may see something analogous to the art by which he earns his livelihood operating among the natural objects by which he is surrounded.

The sailor may discover the peculiarities of his craft among marine animals. Thus, among the lower tribes, he has observed a jelly-fish-called by him the Portuguese man-of-war-setting up a sail which consists of a crest surmounting the bladder. He may notice, too, how the mussel and pinna anchor themselves by means of threads of a horny material. The tail of the fish, it is well known, acts as a scuttle, enabling its possessor to plough its way through the deep. The web-foot of the swimmers is an example of what is called "feathering the oar;" when advanced forward the web and toes collapse; the leg (usually so called) of the gillemot and divers is compressed laterally, presenting a knife edge before and behind, and thus gives resistance in the fore and back stroke. It is also worthy of being mentioned, as illustrating the same point, that the whale's tail collapses in the upward but expands in the downward stroke.

The fisher, as he prepares the bladder to make the edges of his net float on the water, may observe that the

sea-weed is buoyed on the surface of the deep by a contrivance more ingenious than his own, that is, by vesicles which act as floats. Most fishes have one or more bladders filled with air, the amount of which is regulated by the will of the animal, so that it can vary its depth, sink or rise to the surface, as may suit its purposes. The fisher, too, may see that if he has nets to catch the food needful for his sustenance, so also have spiders and other species of animals.

The shepherd knows how much care and watchfulness are necessary in order to protect his flocks from the wild beasts which attack them, and is thus led to admire the instincts of those animals, such as the deer, which set a watch to give a signal of danger. The hunter knows how much cunning he must exercise in order to come within reach of the wild animals pursued by him, and should not withhold a feeling of wonder when he observes how their instincts lead the brutes to shew such dexterity in avoiding their natural enemies. The weapons with which he and the fisher attack the animals which they wish to seize or kill, do not point more clearly to a purpose, than the instruments, whether claws or teeth, with which they defend themselves. The Aphrodite hispida, for example, is furnished with very curious weapons of defence; they are harpoons with a double series of barbs, these are retractile, and the animal can draw them into the body by a muscular apparatus, and in order to prevent them, when drawn in, from injuring the animal itself, each barbed spine is furnished with a two-bladed horny sheath, which closes on the barbs in the act of retraction. Some of these provisions have a reference to the native instincts of the animals, others have rather a regard to the position of the species. Thus we find that those liable to be chased as prey often take the colour of the ground on which they habi

tually feed. The riflemen of our army are dressed in the hue which is deemed least conspicuous, and which is best fitted for concealment; and is there not an equally clear proof of design furnished by the circumstance that fishes. are often of the colour of the ground over which they swim, and that wild animals are not unfrequently of the colour of the covert in which they hide themselves? Thus the back of the young turbot may be seen of the same colour as the sand on which it lies. The red grouse and red deer are of the colour of the heath on which they feed, whereas the lapwing and curlew, themselves and their eggs, take the grey hue of the pasture among which they are usually found.

The horticulturist and agriculturist regulate their plans in accordance with the seasons, and in doing so they should observe that the plants of the ground suit themselves in regard to the time of budding, bearing leaves and fruit, to the same seasons, which are all determined by the movements of the celestial bodies. The builder may easily perceive that the woody structure of plants and the bones of animals are constructed on architectural principles, being strengthened where weight, has to be supported and pressure resisted, and becoming more slender where lightness is required. The form of the bole of a tree, and the manner in which it fixes itself into the ground, so as to be able to face the storms of a hundred winters, is said to have yielded some suggestions to the celebrated engineer, Smeaton, in the construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse. The architect of the Crystal Palace confesses that he derived some of the ideas embodied in that structure from observing the wonderful provision made for bearing up the very broad leaf of the beautiful lily which has been brought within these few years from the marshes of Guiana to adorn our conser