6 Experimental Philosophy. [Lecture 1. 



velocity which are imitated in vain by the largest 

 pieces of cannon. Whole countries have been 

 swallowed up, and the proudest cities desolated 

 and destroyed by earthquakes. What is the 

 nature of these surprising operations? From 

 what immediate cause are they produced? On 

 what circumstances do they depend ? 



You will answer, they are produced by that 

 Almighty Power which first created the universe. 

 It is the hand of God that can alone direct or 

 alter the course of nature. All this is true. 

 Nothing is done, nothing can be done, without 

 the agency, the direction of the Supreme Being. 



Yet Providence acts by determinate laws in all 

 the arrangements of nature. It is not by chance, 

 nor by an arbitrary disposal of things, that 

 the operations of nature are effected. By the 

 Divine Wisdom all things are disposed in weight 

 and in measure; they are ordered on certain 

 principles, and effected in certain constant and 

 regular modes. 



These modes, in conformity with which the 

 Divine Wisdom acts and governs the material 

 universe, are termed the laws of nature. We 

 cannot, it is true, account for every thing ; we 

 cannot trace effects to their remotest causes ; but 

 yet much is known by long observation, and the 

 discoveries of learned and ingenious men from 

 time to time. They have therefore referred what 

 they call the laws of nature, to a few principles ; 

 and these principles, when well understood, will 



