ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY. 289 



fall upon contrivance and design ? The only reflection per- 

 haps, which arises in our minds from this view of the world 

 around us, is, that the laws of nature everywhere prevail ; 

 that they are uniform and universal. But what do you 

 mean by the laws of nature, or by any law ? Effects are 

 produced by power, not by laws. A law cannot execute 

 itself. A law refers us to an agent. Now, an agency so 

 general as that we cannot discover its absence, or assign the 

 place in which some effect of its continued energy is not 

 found, may, in popular language at least, and perhaps with- 

 out much deviation from philosophical strictness, be calle<J 

 universal ; and with not quite the same, but with no incon- 

 siderable propriety, the person or being in whom that power 

 resides, or from whom it is derived, may be taken to be om- 

 niprese7it. He who upholds all things by his power, may 

 be said to be everywhere present. 



This is called a virtual presence. There is also what 

 metaphysicians denominate an essential ubiquity, and which 

 idea the language of Scripture seems to favor ; but the for- 

 mer, I think, goes as far as natural theology carries us. 



"Eternity" is a negative idea, clothed with a positive 

 name. It supposes, in that to which it is applied, a present 

 existence, and is the negation of a beginning or an end of 

 that existence. As applied to the Deity, it has not been 

 controverted by those who acknowledge a Deity at all. Most 

 assuredly, there never was a time in v/hich nothing existed, 

 because that condition must have continued. The universal 

 blank must have remained ; nothing could rise up out of it ; 

 nothing could ever have existed since ; nothing could exist 

 now. In strictness, however, we have no concern with du- 

 ration prior to that of the visible world. Upon this article, 

 therefore, of theology, it is sufficient to know that the con- 

 triver necessarily existed before the contrivance. 



"Self-existence" is another negative idea, namely, the 

 negation of a preceding cause, as of a progenitor, a m.akei, 

 an author, a creator. 



Nat. Theol. 13 



