296 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



most persons it appears that the mere existence 

 of a law connecting and governing any class of 

 phenomena, implies a presiding intelligence 

 which has preconceived and established the law. 

 When events are regulated by precise rules of 

 time and space, of number and measure, men 

 conceive these rules to be the evidence of 

 thought and mind, even without discovering in 

 the rules any peculiar adaptations, or without 

 supposing their purpose to be known. 



The origin and tjie validity of such an impres- 

 sion on the human mind may appear to some 

 matters of abstruse and doubtful speculation : 

 yet the tendency to such a belief prevails strongly 

 and widely, both among the common class of 

 minds whose thoughts are casually and unsys- 

 tematically turned to such subjects, and among 

 philosophers to whom laws of nature are habitual 

 subjects of contemplation. We conceive there- 

 fore that such a tendency may deserve to be 

 briefly illustrated ; and we trust also that some 

 attention to this point may be of service in 

 throwing light upon the true relation of the 

 study of nature to the belief in God. 



1 . A very slight attention shows us how readily 

 order and regularity suggest to a common appre- 

 hension the operation of a calm and untroubled 

 intelligence presiding over the course of events. 

 Thus the materialist poet, in accounting for the 

 belief in the Gods, though he does not share it, 



