4 REVELATION AND REASON. 



timony of our senses, that the parts of matter touch, that different 

 bodies come in contact with one another, and with our organs of 

 sense; and yet nothing is more certain than that there still is some 

 small distance between bodies which we think we perceive to touch. 

 Indeed it is barely possible that all the sensations and perceptions 

 which we have of the material world, may be only ideas in our own 

 minds; it is barely possible, therefore, that matter should have no 

 existence. But that mind that the sentient principle that the 

 thing or the being which we call " I '' and " we," and which thinks, 

 feels, reasons, should have no existence, is a contradiction in terms. 

 Of the two existences, then, that of mind, as independent of matter, 

 is more certain than that of matter apart from mind. We must 

 keep steadily in view, therefore, the undoubted fact that mind is 

 quite as much an integral part of the universe as matter. 



******* 

 " The mind, equally with matter, is the proper subject of observa- 

 tion, by means of consciousness, which enables us to arrest and 

 examine our own thoughts : it is even the subject of experiment by 

 the power which we have, through the effort of abstraction and 

 attention, of turning those thoughts into courses not natural to them, 

 not spontaneous, and watching the result. Now the phenomena of 

 mind, at the knowledge of which we arrive by this inductive process, 

 the only legitimate intellectual philosophy, afford as decisive proofs 

 of design as do the phenomena of matter, and they furnish those 

 proofs by the strict method of induction. In other words, we study 

 the nature and operations of the mind, and gather from them 

 evidences of design, by one and the same species of reasoning the 

 induction of facts." 



Here follow some able illustrations drawn from the power of rea- 

 soning, attention, curiosity, memory, habit, the feelings and passions, 

 all clearly evidencing the most skilful contrivance, and in the 

 highest degree harmonious; which are closed by the following 

 eloquent comparison : 



" View the intellectual world as a whole, and surely it is impossi^ 

 ble to contemplate, without amazement, the extraordinary spectacle 

 which the mind of man displays, and the immense progress which it 

 has been able to make in consequence of its structure, its capacity, 

 and its propensities. If the brightness of the heavenly bodies, the 

 prodigious velocity of their motions, their vast distances and mighty 

 bulk, fill the imagination with awe, there is the same wonder excited 



