INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 367 



ence and the elevation of our nature in another 

 state of existence. 



We are very far from believing that our philo- 

 sophy alone can give us such assurance of these 

 important truths as is requisite for our guidance 

 and support ; but we think that even our physical 

 philosophy will point out to us the necessity of 

 proceeding far beyond that conception of God, 

 which represents him merely as the mind in 

 which reside all the contrivance, law, and energy 

 of the material world. We believe that the view 

 of the universe which modern science has already 

 opened to us, compared with the prospect of 

 what she has still to do in pursuing the path on 

 which she has just entered, will show us how 

 immeasurably inadequate such a mode of con- 

 ception would be : and that if we take into our 

 account, as we must in reason do, all that of which 

 we have knowledge and consciousness, and of 

 which we have as yet no systematic science, we 

 shall be led to a conviction that the Creator and 

 Preserver of the material world must also contain 

 in him such properties and attributes as imply his 

 moral character, and as fall in most consistently 

 with all that we learn in any other way of his 

 providence and holiness, his justice and mercy. 



1. The sciences which have at present acquired 

 any considerable degree of completeness, are 

 those in which an extensive and varied collection 

 of phenomena, and their proximate causes, have 



