ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 283 



essential characteristics of the known designer, man. 

 How, then, does man design ? By reducing discovered 

 truth to his own uses, and making combinations of 

 natural forms and qualities. He knows the expansive 

 force of steam, as well as the law of latent heat, and 

 makes a steam-engine : he creates nothing. So that 

 the Deity, inferred from evidences of design, does, for 

 all that the argument of analogy makes out, discover 

 truth, apply it to his own uses, and make combinations 

 of forms and qualities. He knows the repulsive force 

 of matter, as well as the law of gravitation, and makes 

 a solar system : He creates nothing. 



"This is Hume's analysis, though otherwise ex- 

 pressed, and very differently intentioned ; and its force 

 is irresistible. Hume is the best analyst, as a mere 

 analyst, that Britain has been able to produce. A sin- 

 cere, and not uncharitable man, he detested the 

 plausible, and never rested till he stripped it bare, and 

 hooted it out of presence. If he had believed in 

 God by faith, I had only need have reiterated his voice ; 

 as it is, you see how searching and indisputable his 

 analysis is, so far as it extends. 



" All that the boasted argument a posteriori, as it is 

 called, for the existence of a God, even tends to esta- 

 blish is the existence of a designer, not that that de- 

 signer is the Supreme, whom i-icience ' falsely so called' 

 is thus ambitious of demonstrating like any other 

 theorem. ..... But allow that the inferred designer 



really spoke the worlds into existence, and He alone, 

 still that creative designer may not be God after all, 

 for Divinity, if proved at all, must be proved to be 

 almighty in power, inexhaustible in wisdom, and 

 boundless in love ; but the universe cannot be proved 



