202 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



Duly apprehending, then, these conditions of the 

 problem, we come finally to such evidences as the true, 

 if not sole, basis of natural theology the argument of 

 every age and race of mankind. Will to design and 

 power to execute are the conceptions which belong to 

 the natural belief in God, under every form which 

 religion has assumed. For religion, however distorted 

 by human formularies, can only rightly be defined as 

 the relation of man to his Creator, under the actual 

 conditions of this life and the contingencies of a future. 

 Sir J. Herschel uses the term of a Personal Will, and in 

 many parts of his admirable writings dwells upon the 

 conception of such personal will as concerned in all the 

 great works of nature. Through the admission of a 

 system of secondary laws we may keep this conception 

 asunder from that pantheism in which, as we see, so 

 many hypotheses have merged. 



Arguments and proofs of design spun out through 

 volumes (as in the ' Bridgewater Treatises') are of less 

 practical value than a few cogent cases, ready at hand, 

 certain in conclusion, and easily understood. It is a 

 common fault in this, as in other like questions, to seek 

 to strengthen proof by multiplying instances, without 

 regard to their relative weight. The force of the im- 

 pression is thereby lessened, and the thought led to 

 wander from that which is more certain to that which is 

 less so. I think it is Swift who says : ' An idle reason 

 weakens the weight of good ones given before.' Let a 

 man have in hand two or three well-assured instances, 

 such as no doubt can disturb, and he is prepared at 



