344 NATUEAL THEOLOGY. 



CHAPTER XXVIl. 



CONCLUSION. 



In all cases wherein the miud feels itself in danger of 

 being confounded by variety, it is sure to rest upon a ftw 

 strong points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Among a 

 multitude of proofs, it is one that does the business. If we 

 observe in any argument that hardly two minds fix upon 

 the same instance, the diversity of choice shows the strength 

 of the argument, because it shows the rmmber and competi- 

 tion of the examples. There is no subject in which the 

 tendency to dwell upon select or single topics is so usual, 

 because there is no subject of which, in its full extent, the 

 latitude is so great, as that of natural history applied to the 

 proof of an intelligent Creator. For my part, I take my 

 stand in human anatomy ; and the examples of mechanism 

 I should be apt to draw out from the copious catalogue 

 which it supplies, are the pivot upon which the head turns, 

 the ligaments within the socket of the hip-joint, the pulley 

 or trochlear muscles of the eye, the epiglottis, the bandages 

 which tie down the tendons of the wrist and instep, the slit 

 or perforated muscles at the hands and feet, the knitti.;g of 

 the intestines to the mesentery, the course of the chyle into 

 the blood, and the constitution of the sexes as extended 

 throughout the whole of the animal creation. To these in- 

 stances the reader's memory will go back, as they are sever 

 ally set forth in their places : there is not one of the number 

 which I do not think decisive — not one which is not strictly 

 mechanical ; nor have I read or heard of any solution of 

 these appearances, which in the smallest degree shakes the 

 conclusion that we build upon them. 



But of the greatest part of those who, either in this book 

 or any other, read arguments to prove the existence of a 

 God, it will be said, that they leave off only where thev 



