IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 253 



considerably different from those fancies of the " untutored 

 Indian," who, according to the poet, 



*• Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind." 

 There is a school of infidelity, tolerably well known in the 

 capital of Scotland as by far the most superficial which our 

 country has yet seen, that measures mind with a tape-line 

 and the callipers, and, albeit not Christian, laudably exem- 

 plifies, in a loudly expressed regard for science, the Christian 

 grace of loving its enemy. And the belief in a special Pro- 

 vidence, who watches over and orders all things, and without 

 whose permission there falleth not even a "sparrow to the 

 ground," the apostles of this school set wholly aside, substi- 

 tuting, instead, a belief in the indiscriminating operation of 

 natural laws ; as if, with the broad fact before them that even 

 man can work out his will merely by knowing and directing 

 these laws, the God by whom they were instituted should lack 

 either the power or the wisdom to make them the pliant mi- 

 nistcrrs of his. It is, I fear, to the distinctive tenet in the 

 creed of this hapless school that the author of the " Yestiges'* 

 refers. Nor is it in the least surprising, that a writer who 

 labours through two carefully written volumes* to destroy 

 the existing belief in " God's works of Creation," should 

 affect to hold that the belief in his " works of Providence" 

 had been destroyed already. But faith in a special superin- 

 tendence of Deity is not yet dead : nay, more, — He who 

 created the human mind took especial care, in its construc- 

 tion, that, save in a few defective specimens of the race, the 

 belief should never die. 



The author of the " Vestiges" complains of the illiberal ity 

 with which he has been treated. " It has appeared to various 

 critics," we find him saying, "that very sacred principles are 

 threatened by a doctrine of universal law. A natural origin 



* "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and " ExpIanatioM, 

 being a Sequel to the Vestiges." 



