438 PROVINCES OF REASON AND REVELATION. 



harmonizes its more conspicuous features, and removes the 

 veil wliich to the ignorant or careless observer, obscures the 

 traces of God's glory in the works of his hands."* 



The disappointment w^hich many minds experience, at 

 finding in the phenomena of the natural world no indications 

 of the will of God, respecting the moral conduct or future 

 prospects of the human race, arises principally from an 

 indistinct and mistaken view of the respective provinces of 

 Reason and Revelation. 



By the exercise of our Reason, we discover abundant 

 evidences of the Existence, and of some of the Attributes 

 of a supreme Creator, and apprehend the operations of many 

 of the second causes or instrumental agents, by which he 

 upholds the mechanism of the material World; but here 

 its province ends: respecting the subjects on which, above 

 all others, it concerns mankind to be well informed, namely, 

 the will of God in his moral government, and the future 

 prospects of the human race, reason only assures us of the 

 absolute need in which we stand of a Revelation. Many of 

 the greatests proficients in philosophy have felt and expressed 

 these distinctions. " The consideratioji of God's Provi- 

 dence (says Boyle) in the conduct of things corporeal may 

 prove to a well-disposed Contemplator, a Bridge, whereon 

 he may pass from Natural to Revealed Religion., 'f J 



'• Next (says Locke) to the knowledge of one God, Maker 



* Sermon at the opening- of King's College, London, 1831, pp, 19. 14. 



T Christian Virtuoso, 1690, p, 42. 



i "Natural Religion, as it is the first that is embraced by tlie mind, so it 

 is the foundation upon wliicli revealed religion ou^ht to be superstructed, 

 and is as it were, the stock upon which Christianit}' must be engrafted. 

 For though I readily acknowledge natural religion to be insufficient, yet I 

 think it very necessary. It will be to little^purpose to press an infidel with, 

 arguments drawn from the worthiness, that appears in the Christian doc- 

 trine to have been revealed by God, and from the miracles its first preachers 

 wrought to confirm it ; if the unbeliever be not already persuaded, upon the 

 account of natural religion, that there is a God, and that he is a rewarder of 

 them that diligently seek /tf??!." Boyle's Christian Virtuoso. Part. II. prop. 1 



