PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. Ivii 



serving that we only advanced these words as what might be used 

 by others, and immediately proceeded to argue against them, that 

 God was revealed to us through our own nature as " our spiritual 

 father, ever present in all that we do and think." Putting this 

 piece of (we hope, unintentional) misrepresentation aside, the ques- 

 tion is, does our hypothesis not admit of any miraculous interference 

 by the Deity, or any special and extraordinary laws ? 



It should, in the first place, be ascertained what Dr. Hitchcock 

 means by miracle and extraordinary laws. We find his belief to be 

 that miracles are " regulated and controlled by law, like common 

 events ;" but the laws by which miracles are produced, are " special 

 and extraordinary." Now, we undertake to say, without risk of 

 challenge, that the idea of extraordinary natural laws is as little 

 admitted in philosophy, as the idea of miracle by natural law is 

 admitted in religion. Both are mere unproved opinions of Dr. 

 Hitchcock, and we at once pronounce them to be things with which 

 we have nothing to do. If it be asked if the miracles of religion, in 

 their ordinary acceptation, as interruptions of a natural order, are to 

 be held as incompatible with the proposition of a creation in the 

 manner of law, we answer, No more surely than with any other part 

 of the universal system of things admitted to be natural. Or, at 

 least, the duty of showing that an admission of the natural here 

 necessarily condemns the belief in miracle, is incumbent on those 

 who take that view. And we have as yet found, in the writings of 

 Sedgwick, Miller, Hitchcock, and others of that party, not the 

 slightest trace of a ground for such a conclusion. 



Dr. Hitchcock afterwards proceeds to say, " Admitting every 

 event, miraculous as well as common, is under law, it by no 

 means renders a present directing and energising Deity unnecessary." 

 Who gave matter its laws ? Who contrived the wonderful mutual 

 adaptation of organs ? Who can point to any inherent power in a 

 law ? " Take away God from the universe, and let him cease to act 

 mentally on it, and every movement would as instantly and cer- 

 tainly cease, as would every movement of the human frame, were 

 the mind to be withdrawn, or cease to will." " I see not, then, why 

 this law hypothesis does not require an infinite Deity, just as much 

 as the ordinary belief, which supposes that God created the universe 

 by his fiat, and sustains it constantly by his power, and from time 

 to time interferes with the regular sequence of cause and effect by 

 miracles. The only difference seems to be this : While the common 

 view represents God as watching over his works, and ready, when- 

 ever necessary, to make special interpositions, the law hypothesis 

 introduces him only at the dawn of the universe, exerting his infinite 

 wisdom and power to devise and endow matter with exquisite laws, 

 capable by their inherent, self-executing power, of originating all 

 organic natures, and producing the infinite variety of nature, and 

 keeping in play her countless and unceasing agencies. It was only 

 necessary that he should impress attenuated matter with these laws, 

 and then put the machine in motion, and it would go on for ever, 



