8 INTRODUCTION. 



altogether an intellectual matter. The most attentive 

 study of the wonders of creation, (and all its works are 

 wonders, from the animalcule which the eye cannot 

 discern without a microscope, to planets and suns and 

 systems, and those yet more incomprehensible powers 

 of mind by which these can be contemplated and known,) 

 the most attentive study of these, can impart but a 

 faint and shadowy notion of that Being, who, by a 

 simple will, imparted to them those principles which re- 

 gulate their changes and preserve their existence through 

 countless ages. This being the case, (and the wisest 

 men that have lived have felt and admitted it,) it is not 

 possible that without any knowledge of his works there 

 can be a proper knowledge of God. If the only world with 

 which we are acquainted be of man's making, the only 

 God with which we can be acquainted must be of man's 

 imagining ; and whatever may be the forms or the 

 words of the religion, it can be nothing but superstition, 

 A belief in that of which the believer knows nothing, 

 is a contradiction in terms a delusion and a cheat; 

 and, if there be but the very slightest stirring of 

 reflection, one who is just beginning to think must feel 

 that infidelity, which ignorance itself imparts, but 

 which it veils in its own darkness when only a shade 

 deeper. 



That God, the Creator, can be known only from the 

 works of creation, is manifest from the whole tenor of 

 Holy Writ ; for, even in those parts of it that relate to 

 the Christian scheme of redemption, which requires an 

 immediate revelation by the Deity, the whole of the 

 illustrations are taken from the works of Nature ; and 

 though, unaided by any human science, the grand 



