374 



EXPLANATIONS 



nomena of nature, like so many revolted principalities, 

 have fallen under the dominion of order or law ; but here 

 is one little province still faithful to the Boeotian govern- 

 ment ; and as it is nearly the last, no wonder it is so vigor- 

 ously defended. As, in the political world, however, 

 men do not trust in the endurance of a dynasty which ia 

 reduced to a single city or nook of its dominions, so may 

 we expect a speedy extinction to a doctrine which haa 

 been driven from every portion of nature but one or two 

 limited fields. Several eminent authors of our age have 

 even pronounced upon the question as already settled. 

 " Our most deeply investigated views of the Divine gov 

 ernment," says the Rev. Dr. Pye Smith, "lead to the 

 conviction that it is exercised in the way of order, oj 

 what we usually call law. God reigns according to im- 

 mutable principles, that is, by law, in every part of his 

 kingdom-~-the mechanical, the intellectual, and the moral; 

 and it appears to be most clearly a position arising out 

 of that fact, that a comprehensive germ which shall ne- 

 cessarily evolve all future developments, down to the 

 minutest atomic movements, is a more suitable attribu- 

 tion to the Deity than the idea of a necessity for irregu- 

 lar interferences."* 



In Blackwood's Magazine, a writer, understood to be a 

 naturalist of distinguished ability, expresses himself in 

 an equally decided manner : — 4 4 To reduce to a system the 

 acts of creation, or the development of the several forms 

 of animal life, no more impeaches the authorship of cre- 

 ation than to trace the laws by which the world is up- 

 held and its phenomena perpetually renewed. The pre- 

 sumption naturally rises in the mind, that the same 

 Great Being would adopt the same mode of action in both 

 cases. ... To a mind accustomed, as is every educated 

 mind, to regard the operations of Deity as essentially dif- 

 fering from the limited, sudden, evanescent impulses ol 

 a human agent, it is distressing to be compelled to pic- 

 ture to itself the power of God as put forth in any other 

 manner than in those slow, mysterious, universal laws 

 which have so plainly an eternity to work in ; it pains 

 the imagination to be obliged to assimilate those opera- 

 tions for a moment to the brief energy of a human will, 



or the manipulations of a human hand There are 



still, indeed, some men of narrow prejudices, whc look 

 • Letter to Dr Carpenter, appeidix to Phil. Mag., xvi. (1840.) 



