VIEWS OF DR. PYE SMITH. 143 



d^Tiasty which is reduced to a single city or nook 

 of its dominions, so may we expect a speedy ex- 

 tinction to a doctrine which has been driven from 

 every portion of nattire but one or two limited 

 fields. Several eminent authors of our age have 

 even pronoimced upon the question as already 

 settled. " Oiu- most deeply investigated views of 

 the Divine Government," says the Rev. Dr. Pye 

 Smith, " lead to the conviction that it is exercised 

 in the way of order, or what we usually call late. 

 God reigns according to immutable principles, that 

 is by law, in every part of his kingdom — the rnecha- 

 nicaly the intellectual, and the moral ; and it appears 

 to be most clearly a position arising out of that 

 fact, that a comprehensive germ which shall necessarily 

 evolve all future developments, down to the minutest 

 atomic movements, is a more suitable attribution 

 to the Deity, than the idea of a necessity for irre- 

 gular interferences."* 



In Blackwood's Magazine, a writer, understood 

 to be a naturalist of distinguished abUity, expresses 

 himself in an equally decided manner : — " To 

 reduce to a system the acts of creation, or the 

 development of the several forms of animal life, 

 no more impeaches the authorship of creation, 

 * Letter to Dr. Carpenter, appendix to Phil. Mag.xvi. (1840). 



