IMPORTANCE OF ANALOGY. 283 
(192.) In the first place, it is unnecessary to en- 
force the axiom long established by sound philo- 
sophy, that natural and moral truths are but parts 
of the great system of nature. Nor need we go 
over those arguments that have been already so ably 
and so powerfully urged by others, to show that 
every thing in this world is evidently intended to 
be the means of moral and intellectual improvement, 
to a creature made capable of perceiving in it this 
use.* This perfect analogy between the moral and _ 
the natural world, no Christian in these days will even 
think of questioning, much less of disputing. It 
therefore follows, that as the material system of the 
universe possesses, as a whole, analogical properties, 
we are authorised in concluding that its several 
parts partake of the same nature as the whole, or, in 
other words, that the system upon which organised 
beings have been formed,— and which, by na- 
turalists, is more especially termed the natural sys- 
tem,— possesses within itself that perfect exempli- 
fication of analogical relations, which we admit to 
exist between the natural and the moral worlds. 
+ (193.) The greater the universality of any known 
law of nature is found to be, the more important 
does it become to the investigations of physical 
science. Between material and immaterial things, 
there is no-other relation than that which is afforded 
by analogy: without this, they would be widely and 
totally distinct ; with this, they are united; and one 
reciprocally illustrates the other. Analogy, or 
* Hampden’s Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of 
Christianity, xvii. See also the admirable volumes of Harness, 
*‘ On the Connection of Christianity with Human H appiness.” 
