AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 361 



we seem able to understand without much dif- 

 ficulty, we are led to consider the Divine Being 

 as the author of the laws of chemical, of physical, 

 and of mechanical action, and of such other laws 

 as make matter what it is; and this is a view 

 which no analogy of human inventions, no know- 

 ledge of human powers, at all assist us to em- 

 body or understand. Science, therefore, as we 

 have said, while it discloses to us the mode of 

 instrumentality employed by the Deity, con- 

 vinces us, more effectually than ever, of the 

 impossibility of conceiving God's actions by 

 assimilating them to our own. 



3. The laws of material nature, such as we 

 have described them, operate at all times, and 

 in all places ; affect every province of the uni- 

 verse, and involve every relation of its parts. 

 Wherever these laws appear, we have a mani- 

 festation of the intelligence by which they were 

 established. But a law supposes an agent, and 

 a power ; for it is the mode according to which 

 the agent proceeds, the order according to which 

 the power acts. Without the presence of such 

 an agent, of such a power, conscious of the 

 relations on which the law depends, producing 

 the effects which the law prescribes, the law can 

 have no efficacy, no existence. Hence we infer 

 that the intelligence by which the law is ordained, 

 the power by which it is put in action, must be 

 present at all times and in all places where the 



