INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 379 



able with holiness ; this tendency to believe him 

 to be the union of all perfection, the highest point 

 of all intellectual and moral excellence ; is in 

 reality such a guardian and judge, such a good, 

 and wise, and perfect Being, as we thus irresis- 

 tibly conceive him. It would indeed be extra- 

 vagant to assert that the imagination of the crea- 

 ture, itself the work of God, can invent a higher 

 point of goodness, of justice, of holiness, than the 

 Creator himself possesses : that the Eternal Mind, 

 from whom our notions of good and right are 

 derived, is not himself directed by the rules which 

 these notions imply. 



It is difficult to dwell steadily on such thoughts : 

 but they will at least serve to confirm the reflexion 

 which it was our object to illustrate ; namely, how 

 incomparably the nature of God must be elevated 

 above any conceptions which our natural reason 

 enables us to form : and we have been led to these 

 views, it will be recollected, by following the 

 clue of which science gave us the beginning. The 

 Divine Mind must be conceived by us as the 

 seat of those laws of nature which we have dis- 

 covered. It must be no less the seat of those laws 

 which we have not yet discovered, though these 

 may and must be of a character far different from 

 any thing we can guess. The Supreme Intelligence 

 must therefore contain the laws, each according 

 to their true dependance, of organic life, of sense 

 of animal impulse, and must contain also the 



