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 Happiness. " 



