gress in Revealed Theology is shut up to the Divine Word, and the Divine Spirit in and by that Word.

And just so progress in Natural Theology is shut up to the study of the creation, and of governed creatures, which, together with experience of the government of God, is the Word in Natural Theology. Thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth. And we remark in regard to this progress also, as before, that it is not possible except under the guidance of the same Spirit of God; for except by Christianity, by the light of the Bible, and the teachings of God's Spirit, there could be no real, fundamental advance in Natural Theology, from the day and the light of Plato. The apparatus for the study of creation, and the apparatus for the study of the Bible, are both, in the ordinary acceptation, a series of mere external instrumentalities, dependent, for the manner of their use, upon the state of mind in the observer. The great important thing in both cases, is the inward apparatus in the state of the feelings, the habits of the soul.

And here comes in the fact to be considered, that it is the creatures themselves who are their own judges or jurors on the question of the sentence of Natural Theology. The guilty examine the guilty, the condemned of conscience the condemned; set a thief to catch a thief. It is impossible here to expect a fair, unfettered, unbiassed conclusion. The conclusion rests upon the examination of facts in our own consciousness and inward nature, as well as in our sight and knowledge of external nature. We know confidently, therefore, beforehand, that the conclusions of a Natural Theology made up by such critics, if they took into view at all the moral nature of man, and his relations to God, must be imperfect, to say the least, and would be most probably_deficient in such a way, as to be actually some of them untrue. There would be a coloring of the facts, and a special, dishonest pleading in regard to them, except with beings in strict friendship with God, seen as he is. And if they did not take into view the actual moral nature of man, and its relations to the Divine government, that neglect alone would be enough to falsify the conclusions of a partial examination, because those conclusions would be still applied as universal, whereas they cannot cover the providence of God in regard to fallen creatures.

There is a Natural Theology in God's Word, especially in the Old Testament. David broached the highest province of it in the 139th Psalm. The Book of Job is a grand, glorious, mystic hymn of Nature and of Providence to God. And Solomon entered upon some of the knottiest and deepest questions and intricacies of Natural Theology, in the Book of Ecclesiastes. And when he "spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, and of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes," he must have made

such a work, that if that book had remained, it is likely that Paley and the Bridgewater gentlemen would have been spared the time and labor given to their treatises, as a work in science quite of supererogation.

They went much farther and deeper in Natural Theology in those days, than most Natural Theologians have ever dreamed of doing. They grappled with great questions, and generally, when they erred, seem to have erred in defending God, rather than excusing man, which indeed they did not seek to do. Pursued with something of their spirit, the study of Natural Theology, to a mind that loves to behold God in his works, becomes, next to the pursuit of Revealed Theology, the most comprehensive and interesting study in the world. The definition of it, as a science, is simply this, according to the interpretation of terms as well as things, the Word of Nature in regard to God, or Nature discoursing of God. Comprehensively conceived, its study includes that of all other sciences, as necessary or subservient to its thorough prosecution. An extensive and profound knowledge of Natural History is requisite, not merely the history of all known living creatures and their habits, but the history and classification of ascertained facts in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and of all revolutions and phenomena in the earth, the air, the sea, and the heavens. All possible histories of Nature, animate and inanimate, and all possible philosophies of natural history, furnish materials for the studies of the natural theologian.

A knowledge of Natural Philosophy is requisite, or the scientific investigation of the causes of material phenomena in the universe, the laws by which they are produced, and the harmony in which they are united. This department of Natural Science includes the divisions of Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Acoustics, Optics, Electricity, Galvanism, Magnetism, and indeed the investigation of all forces that affect the senses, or are perceived to affect the external universe. Then comes the science of Chemistry, so filled with interest and crowded with discoveries, and elevated in importance by the investigations of the last half century. The science of Anatomy, individual and comparative, of man and of all creatures, and the researches of Physiology as to the nature and laws of life, and its connection with matter and spirit, are of the greatest importance. Last of all the natural sciences must be named Astronomy, the noblest, sublimest, and most perfect of them all, opening to the mind such boundless prospects of the glory of God in his created universe, in scenes of wisdom, power, and love, whose magnificence is indescribable and inexhaustible, and whose extent baffles all conception.

These are sciences, and departments of science, concerning the works of God in creation, exclusive of the science of the soul. And yet Natural Theology, as it has for the most part been pur

sued, has been almost exclusively conversant with these sciences. And in truth, the slightest examination of any of the natural sciences will show how dependent we are upon a scientific knowledge of their principles for a knowledge of the manner in which the God of Nature is revealed in his works. The inventions of human art, produced in the prosecution of those sciences, may be considered useful just in proportion as they enable us to extend our knowledge of the universe, and through that our knowledge of God. Take, for instance, the inventions of the telescope and microscope, which have opened to us on either hand such amazing views both of the extent and minuteness of God's created universe. By the first of these instruments the mind is introduced to the knowledge of an extent of God's empire, of which before not the wildest imagination had dreamed, nor the most exalted and enlightened mind could conceive. We behold celestial wonders in regions of space, to which thought had never travelled. We see the operations of the Almighty extending with the illimitable expanse of creation to countless spheres and systems, to millions upon millions of other suns than ours, irradiating millions upon millions of other perfect worlds, revolving in the immensity of space, and wheeling orderly around the throne of God. We are thus made familiar with conceptions of infinite power and infinite wisdom, such as otherwise we could never have gained in this existence, from the created works of the Deity. We are introduced to a knowledge of the probable infinitude of God's universe, a point of immense importance in our Natural Theology; a point on which the mind of Dr. Chalmers in his Astronomical Discourses dwelt with so much power, with such a vast sweep of excursion into the field of the Divine attributes. These glorious excursions could not possibly have been made without the invention of the telescope, an instrument which is justly regarded by the devout mind as a providential gift from God to mankind for the greater knowledge of his own character.

But if by means of this instrument we are admitted to such amazing discoveries of the infinitude and boundless glory of God's created universe, and carried where we see the stars that at the world's creation sang together, performing their revolutions of glory in obedience to the great will of the Supreme, and where we may hear the music of their congregated spheres praising God, we are also introduced, by the intervention of the microscope, to discoveries not less amazing in the infinite minuteness with which the wisdom and power of God are manifested on a scale invisible to mortal sight, but equally perfect and complete with the exhibition of his glory in the rolling worlds. By the disclosures of this instrument we learn that every mote in the sunbeams may be as wonderful as a world in the sky; every particle of dust on the wing of a butterfly is an organization demanding omnipotence in minuteness

as directly, and demonstrating it as wonderfully, as the constitution of worlds millions of times larger than our globe. Every drop of green water on the surface of a stagnant pool is indeed a world teeming with thousands of inhabitants, needing as much care from God as the suns floating in infinite space; and every particle of mould is a forest of trees and plants, where the branches, leaves and fruit can be plainly distinguished, and must be formed by the same Almighty hand that hangs the planets in the sky, and whirls the suns of ten thousand world-systems on their swift career. All these microscopic revelations are wonders that confound us with a sense of the omnipresent and infinitely minute. agency of God. They force upon our souls some sense of that attribute, through which not a hair of our heads can fall to the ground without God's notice.

But, minute and vast as these researches are, and wide and sublime as is the sweep of these contemplations, they carry us, as we have intimated, not much, if anything farther, in our conclusions in regard to God, than men went in the time of Plato. In his time, that which might be known of God from the creation of the world was clearly seen, wherever there was any heart to see it. And the great ideas of God demonstrated by the creation are as elearly known without the telescope as with it. If those ideas were not the intuitive product of the soul, on beholding the creation through the senses, neither telescopic nor microscopic vision or demonstration could ever produce them. And indeed the creation is given of God, not to produce those ideas, but simply to call them into action, set them at work; a great point of consideration, to which we shall refer a few pages farther on in this

essay.

Now there is this subjective as well as objective Natural Theology; and the teachings of the subjective are greater, more sublime, more important by far, in many respects, than of the objective. The teachings of the subjective are necessary to put the teachings of the objective in their right light and position. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. What do the capacities, tendencies, faculties, and workings of my soul teach me in regard to God and a future state of existence? For a long period this question was entirely neglected, or deemed scarcely to be considered as having any connection with the depths of Natural Theology, which was limited to the consideration of evidences of design and goodness in the body and the globe.

But in truth it can be no other than almost a truism, that the science of Psychology, the science of the human soul, is perhaps more important for a right pursuit of Natural Theology, than the science of the whole universe beside. In the highest and noblest of his works God has left the clearest impress of his power and wisdom. It is nowhere said that the created universe was made THIRD SERIES VOL, V., NO. 4 6

man.

in God's image, but it is said that in the image of God created he And this refers unquestionably to man's spiritual essence, and not to his perishable body. Why then should the mechanism of the body merely be made the subject of examination in the pursuit of Natural Theology, while the faculties and life of the soul are relinquished to the province of the metaphysician. When it is said in the page of inspiration, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, we know of no reason for confining the exclamation of wonder at God's power and wisdom in the creation of man to the marvelous mechanism of his outward frame merely. Much more fearfully and wonderfully are we made in the soul than in the body. And far more amazing displays of Divine wisdom and goodness may be found in the structure of the mind, than in that of the physical frame which it inhabits. Here then, in the study of mind, is an incomparably nobler sphere for the conclusions of Natural Theology, than in the study of matter, or of mere animal life, or of the motions of the universe.

The connection between the mind and the body is yet greatly in the dark, and the evidences of design in the wise and benevolent adaptation of the one to the other, with the relations in which the physical and mental faculties mutually stand, and the influence which they mutually exert, are yet to be opened and exhibited. The same may be said in some degree of the connection between the mind, and the spiritual world for which it is fitted. If proofs of the Divine agency in wisdom and benevolence, are opened to us so abundantly, and of such absorbing interest in the relations between the mechanism of our bodies and the physical world we inhabit, in the adaptation of creation to our wants, and of our wants and faculties to the mechanism of creation, much more may we suppose would such proofs rise into view, more numerous and more glorious in the study of the relations between our souls and the spiritual world, the adaptation of that world to our spiritual existence, and of our spiritual wants and faculties to the nature of that world.

And as perhaps the existence of an external world might be demonstrated from the examination of the mechanism of the body merely; that is, take the structure of this body merely, supposing you were to find it somewhere in the immensity of space disconnected from the universe, and you could prove from its nature that there must be a particular world for which it is designed, and to which it belongs; just so, from an examination of the structure and faculties of the soul, there might be demonstrated the existence and nature of a spiritual world, for which the soul also is particularly designed and to which it belongs. And as the consequences of the infringement of the laws which regulate the connection between the body, and this world may be deduced from study and demonstration in the body alone as well as from experience, and even