THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 9 



conditions. Such phenomena are said to obey a law, because 

 they appear to be under a rule or ordinance of constant opera- 

 tion. In the case of these physical laws, we can bring the 

 idea to mathematical elements, and see that numbers, in the 

 expression of space or of time, form, as it were, its basis. We 

 thus trace in law, Intelligence often we can see that it has a 

 beneficial object, still more strongly speaking of mind as con- 

 cerned in it. There cannot, however, be ah inherent intelli- 

 gence in these laws. The intelligence appears external to the 

 laws ; something of which the laws are but as the expressions 

 of the Will and Power. If this be admitted, the laws cannot be 

 regarded as primary or independent causes of the phenomena 

 of the physical world. We come, in short, to a Being beyond 

 nature its author, its God ; infinite, inconceivable, it may 

 be, and yet one whom these very laws present to us with 

 attributes showing that our nature is in some way a faint and 

 far-cast shadow of His, while all the gentlest and beautifullest 

 of our emotions lead us to believe that we are as children in 

 his care, and as vessels in his hand. Let it then be understood 

 and this is for the reader's special attention that when natural 

 law is spoken of here, reference is only made to the mode in 

 which the Divine Power is exercised. It is but another phrase 

 for the action of the ever-present and sustaining God. 1 



Viewing Nature in this light, the pursuit of science is but 

 the seeking of a deeper acquaintance with the Infinite. The 

 endeavour to explain any events in her history, however grand 

 or mysterious these may be, is only to sit like a child at a 

 mother's knee, and fondly ask of the things which passed before 

 we were born. In modesty and reverence we may even in- 

 quire if there be any trace of the origin of that arrangement of 

 the universe which is presented to our notice. 



In this inquiry, we start with the clear fact of the orbs being 

 determined in their forms by law. The fact here pointed to 

 necessarily infers a previous form of matfer, one in which the 

 molecules were separately moveable fluid or gasiform just 

 as the law by which the dew-drop is spherified, implies that 

 the constituent particles were in such a condition before it 

 took effect. We thus see the Will which constitutes law act- 

 ing in a non-material manner in that portion of what we are 

 accustomed to call Creation. In the places and relations of 

 the orbs, there is equal proof, though of a less popularly tan- 



1 See Proofs, Illustrations, &c., No. 1. 



