42 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



expedients implies difficulty, impediment, restraint, 

 defect of power. This question belongs to the 

 other senses, as well as to sight ; to the general 

 functions of animal life, as nutrition, secretion, res- 

 piration ; to the economy of vegetables ; and in- 

 deed to almost all the operations of nature. The 

 question, therefore, is of very wide extent ; and 

 amongst other answers vdiich may be given to it, 

 besides reasons of which probably we are igno- 

 rant, one answer is this : It is only by the display 

 of contrivance that the existence, the agency, the 

 wisdom of the Deity, could be testified to his ra- 

 tional creatures. This is the scale by which we 

 ascend to all the knowledge of our Creator which 

 we possess, so far as it depends upon the pheno- 

 mena, or the works of nature. Take away this, 

 and you take away from us every subject of ob- 

 servation, and ground of reasoning ; I mean, as 

 our rational faculties are formed at present. What- 

 ever is done, God could have done Vv^ithout the in- 

 tervention of instruments or means ; but it is in 

 the construction of instruments, in the choice and 

 adaptation of means, that a creative intelligence is 

 seen. It is this which constitutes the order and 

 beauty of the universe. God, therefore, has been 

 pleased to prescribe limits to his own power, and 

 to work his ends within those limits.^^ The general 

 laws of matter have perhaps prescribed the nature 



15 This subject is touched upon in the introductory observations 

 to the Appendix. 



