214 



EXPLANATIONS. 



Now we hare here two most remarkable truths. The 

 wondrous masses which people the Mighty Void are 

 under the control of natural law. The workings of the 

 little world sf the human mind — the opposite extreme of 

 the system — are under law likewise. We have thus the 

 character of the limits of the system fixed. So far we 

 proceed upon solid ground. Now it has been seen that 

 phenomena precisely the same as the formation and ar- 

 rangement of worlds take place daily before our eyes, 

 under the influence of the laws of matter, showing that 

 the whole cosmogony might have been effected — proving, 

 indeed, that it was effected — by the Divine will acting in 

 that manner. Having attained this point, we are called 

 upon to remember the many appearances of unity in na- 

 ture; how, when we take a sufficiently wide view, there 

 is nothing discrepant and exceptive in it ; how a noble 

 and affecting simplicity breathes from it in every part. 

 So reflecting, we ask, " Can it be that, as the first and 

 the last parts of the system are under law, and the first 

 (this being also the greatest) was manifestly created in 

 that manner, so the whole is under law, and has been pro- 

 duced in that manner?" It is at the moment when we 

 have arrived at this question, that the origin of the organic 

 world becomes a point of importance. The skeptic of 

 science steps in, and says, " No ; the idea of an entire 

 system under law, and produced by it, here breaks down, 

 for who can pretend to penetrate the mysteries of vitality 

 and organization ? and who can say that species h^ve had 

 other than a miraculous origin ? " The tone in which 

 this objection is usually made seems to me inappropriate, 

 considering that the objectors stand on a mere fragment 

 of nature, and one which the discoveries of science are 

 every day lessening. It is but in a nook, to which light 

 has not yet penetrated, that the opponents of the theory 

 of universal order take refuge. On coming to the con- 

 sideration of the question, I am at the very first struck by 

 the great a priori unlikelihood that there can have been 

 two modes of Divine working in the history of nature — 

 namely, a system of fixed order or law in the formation 

 of globes, and a system in any degree different in the 

 peopling of these globes with plants and animals. Laws 

 govern both : we are left no room to doubt th?.t laws 

 were the immediate means of making the first; is it 

 to be i eadily admitted that laws did i ot preside at 



