OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 7 



must be no less familiarly known to that Intelligence 

 which he traces throughout creation than the most 

 obvious truths which he himself daily applies to his 

 most trifling purposes. Is it wonderful that a being 

 so constituted should first encourage a hope, and by 

 degrees acknowledge an assurance, that his in- 

 tellectual existence will not terminate with the 

 dissolution of his corporeal frame, but rather that in 

 a future state of being, disencumbered of a thousand 

 obstructions which his present situation throws in 

 his way, endowed with acuter senses, and higher fa- 

 culties, he shall drink deep at that fountain of bene- 

 ficent wisdom for which the slight taste obtained on 

 earth has given him so keen a relish ? 



(5.) Nothing, then, can be more unfounded than 

 the objection which has been taken, in limine, 

 by persons, well meaning perhaps, certainly nar- 

 row-minded, against the study of natural philosophy, 

 and indeed against all science, that it fosters in its 

 cultivators an undue and overweening self-conceit, 

 leads them to doubt the immortality of the soul, and 

 to scoff at revealed religion. Its natural effect, we 

 may confidently assert, on every well constituted 

 mind is and must be the direct contrary. No doubt, 

 the testimony of natural reason, on whatever exer- 

 cised, must of necessity stop short of those truths 

 which it is the object of revelation to make known ; 

 but, while it places the existence and principal attri- 

 butes of a Deity on such grounds as to render doubt 

 impossible, it unquestionably opposes no natural or 

 necessary obstacle to further progress : on the con- 

 trary, by cherishing as a vital principle an unbounded 

 spirit of enquiry, and ardency of expectation, it un- 

 B 4 



