372 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



the same subject, while he declares his dissent 

 from Stahl, and the earlier speculators, who had 

 referred everything in the economy of life to a 

 single principle, which they call the anima, 

 the vital principle, and so forth, himself intro- 

 duces several principles, or laws, all utterly 

 foreign to the region of physics : namely, organic 

 sensibility, organic contractility, animal sensibility, 

 animal contractility, and the like. Supposing 

 such principles really to exist, how far enlarged 

 and changed must our views be before we can 

 conceive these properties, including the faculty 

 of perception, which they imply, to be produced 

 by the will and power of one supreme Being, 

 acting by fixed laws. Yet without conceiving 

 this, we cannot conceive the agency of that 

 Deity who is incessantly thus acting, in count- 

 less millions of forms and modes. 



How strongly then does science represent God 

 to us as incomprehensible ! his attributes as un- 

 fathomable ! His power, his wisdom, his good- 

 ness, appear in each of the provinces of nature 

 which are thus brought before us ; and in each, 

 the more we study them, the more impressive, 

 the more admirable do they appear. When then 

 we find these qualities manifested in each of so 

 many successive ways, and each manifestation 

 rising above the preceding by unknown degrees, 

 and through a progression of unknown extent, 

 what other language can we use concerning such 



