ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 281 



in the palmy days of Bridgewater-treatise-dom, before 

 the Darwinian theory was promulgated. Dr. S. Brown 

 takes as an illustration of the argument from design the 

 law of diffusion of gases and the manifold useful pur- 

 poses which it serves in the economy of nature, and 

 proceeds as follows :* 



" A bubble rises from the bottom of a solitary pool, 

 basking in the sun among the hills: clothed about 

 with a slender fibre of rainbow-hue, the bonny bell 

 floats like a thing of light over the mantling ripple of 

 its little sea, till the tiny craft is broken on the flower- 

 bud of a water-lily ; and away fly its crew of dancing 

 atoms hither, thither, and everywhither ! 



" ' A timid breath at first, a transient touch ; 

 How soon it swells from little into much V 



" What a wondrous combination of means and ends ; 

 how remote the instrumentality employed from the 

 effects produced; and how worthy of a God! Sup- 

 pose, then, a million instances like this ; recall to mind 

 the curious cases you have read in Paley and the 

 Bridgewaters : find many more in the records of 

 science, for every page is full of them ; search out the 

 undiscovered multitudes of similar examples in the 

 open book of nature, which is a written strain of the 

 loftiest music from beginning to end : and you have 

 the data which the natural theologians endeavour to 

 generalize. The survey of these crowding facts, like 

 that of every other class of observations, suggests the 

 inexhaustible inquiry of research, How are they to be 



* "Lay Sermons on the Theory of Christianity," No. II. The 

 argument of design equal to nothing ; or Nieuentytt and Paley versus 

 David Hume and St. Paul. By Fidian Analysis. Edinburgh, 1842, 

 Blackwood. This and S. Brown's collected works are now out of priut. 



