REVELATION AND REASON. 



except such as might be necessary for their recording and communi- 

 cation. These are surely the greatest of all wonders of nature, when 

 justly considered, although they speak to the understanding and not 

 to the sense. Shall we then deny that the eye could be made 

 without skill in optics, and yet admit that the mind could be 

 fashioned and endowed without the most exquisite of all skill, or 

 could proceed from any but an intellect of infinite power?" 



Assuredly not : there is no portion of the works of God that 

 impresses us so forcibly with the conviction of his wisdom and power 

 as the mind of man ; we say, as in common, parlance, the wisdom 

 and power of God, though, in making use of these terms, we are guilty 

 of little less than profanation. Our idea of the Godhead implies the 

 ubiquity of an Intelligent Spirit, and, consequently, that Omniscience 

 is an essential attribute : to speak, therefore, of the wisdom and power 

 of such a Being is surely needless ; his wisdom and power must of 

 necessity be infinite : and we question whether the search after Divine 

 power and wisdom, through the material parts of his works, is calcu- 

 lated to convey to us a proper impression of Divinity. For our own 

 part, we are ready to confess that the appeal to the mechanism of 

 the human hand or the bird's foot, ft;r beauty of adaptation and inge- 

 nuity of contrivance, and to deduce from these the inference that the 

 contriver must be an all-wise God, has always appeared something 

 widely at variance with our knowledge of the Divine attributes. 

 How far indeed do our researches take us ? hardly beyond the reach 

 of human ingenuity, as far as mechanical contrivance is concerned : a 

 skilful mechanician will lay bare the different organs of our body, and 

 will explain fully the method of their workings precisely as he would 

 take to pieces a skilfully contrived machine. So far as adaptation is 

 concerned, this is plain and obvious: the duck's foot is a beautiful 

 paddle, and we find that it is so on mechanical principles. The perching 

 of birds is another beautiful contrivance, and is equally explicable by 

 mechanics : the entire arrangement of the organs of vegetables may be 

 referred to mechanical laws : but does the knowledge of all this con- 

 trivance and adaptation aid us in contemplating the peculiar charac- 

 teristics of the Divine Architect himself? We think not, because we 

 stop short here : life, or the working principle, is entirely a mystery 

 to us ; we explain it by negatives only, and the same with regard to 

 the entire universe. The mechanism of the heavens we speak of 



