PERSONALITY OF DEITY. 2C)1 



The great energies of nature are known to us only by 

 their efiects. The substances which produce them are aa 

 much concealed from our senses as the divine essence itself. 

 Gravitation, though constantly present, though constantly 

 3xerting its influence, though everywhere around us, near 

 u£, and within us — though diflused throughout all space, 

 raid penetrating the texture of all bodies with which we are 

 acquainted, depends, if upon a fluid, upon a fl.uid which, 

 though both powerful and universal in its operation, is no 

 object of sense to us ; if upon any other kind of substance or 

 action, upon a substance and action from which ive receive 

 no distinguishable impressions. Is it then to be wondered 

 at, that it should in some measure be the same with the 

 divine nature ? 



Of this, however, we are certain, that whatever the Dei- 

 ty be, neither the universe, nor any part of it which we see, 

 can be He. The universe itself is merely a collective name ; 

 its parts are all which are real, or which are things. Now 

 inert matter is out of the question ; and organized substances 

 include marks of contrivance. But whatever includes marks 

 of contrivance, whatever in its constitution testifies design, 

 necessarily carries us to something beyond itself, to som<i 

 other being, to a designer prior to and out of itself. No 

 animal, for instance, can have contrived its own limbs and 

 senses — can have been the author to itself of the design wath 

 which they were constructed. That supposition involves 

 all the absurdity of self-creation, that is, of acting without 

 existing. Nothing can be God, Avhich is ordered by a wis- 

 dom and a will which itself is void of — which is indebted 

 for any of its properties to contrivance ah extra. The not 

 having that in his nature which requires the exertion of an- 

 other prior being — which property is sometimes called self- 

 sulFiciency, and sometimes self-comprehension — appertains 

 to the Deity, as his essential distinction, and removes his 

 nature from that of all things w^iich we see : which consid- 

 eration contains the answer to a quest'on that has sometimes 



