GENERAL VIEWS JF EDINBURGH REVIEWER. 271 



says he, " see that he binds the Divinity (on his dismal 

 material scheme) in chains of fatalism as firmly as the 

 Homeric gods were bound in the imagination of the blind 

 Ad poet ? . . The material system may end in down- 

 right atheism ; or, if not, it stops short in the undeviating 

 sequence of second causes. . Our view, on the con- 

 trary, sees from one end of the scale 10 the other, the man- 

 ifestation of a great principle of creation external to mat- 

 ter — of final cause, proved by organic structures created 

 in successive times, and adapted to changing conditions ol 

 ihe earth. It therefore gives us a personal and superin- 

 tending God who careth for his creatures." 



li such be the best view of the opposite theory which a 

 clever scholar and a man of science of the present day can 

 give, that theory must certainly be regarded as in a very 

 unpromising condition. He is, we see, for fiats or effort 

 adapted to special conditions. These may be, in the di- 

 vine conception, identical with natural laws or the system 

 of order ; but we cannot comprehend it. It is not given 

 to our faculties to understand a matter so profound. Im- 

 mediately after, he informs us that we have only these 

 faculties to look, to for information on this very subject ; 

 and they tell us — what ? — that the world is a system of 

 law ! law, however, subordinate to the Divine will. Sure- 

 ly, if our faculties cannot comprehend the point above 

 stated, they must be equally unable to pronounce deci 

 sively upon points so abstruse as law being subordinate to 

 will, and the attributes of that will showing us the Deity 

 as a personal and superintending God. Were controver- 

 sialists entitled thus to assume that the human faculties 

 can pronounce upon one subject in their own way, but 

 are struck powerless on approaching another tending to 

 an opposite conclusion, there would, of course, be an end 

 of all argument. But even that exercise of the faculties 

 which the reviewer admits of for his own purpose by no 

 means goes to the conclusion at which he arrives. He 

 refers but to a small portion of the divine works, when 

 he speaks of " organic structures created in successive 

 times and adapted to the changing conditions of the earth." 

 He cannot be permitted to assume that he has proved 

 these to have been produced by special fiats or any other 

 mode of special exertion, " in conformity with changed 

 conditions :" on the contrary, his proposition is disproved, 

 fee we hear ir* many instances of conditions suitable for 



