214 
ment of the different parts and adjustment of their relations, the 
proposed end was accomplished, and we might have good reason 
to admire the invention and skill with which he had adapted 
the means to the end through his knowledge of the properties ot 
fire, fuel, water, and iron. But it would be unreasonable to ask 
him to tell by what means such properties were produced, inasmuch 
as it suffices for his purpose merely to know that they exist. J ust 
so we may be able to understand the prescience and wisdom with 
which the Creator effects His purposes in nature by operating with 
instruments to which He has assigned certain cognizable qualities, 
although the instruments and their qualities should be referable to 
no antecedent physical causation, but exist by immediate creation. 
Further it may be said, when account is taken of the Scriptural 
assertion that man was created in the image of his Maker, that 
the human intelligence displayed in mechanical constructions is not 
essentially different from the divine intelligence whereby the me- 
chanism of Nature was planned and executed. 
32. Before proceeding to another part of the discussion, it will 
be proper to introduce here a question the consideration of which 
will bring the Newtonian physical philosophy into close connection 
with the metaphysics of Scripture. In art. 18 mention is made of a 
regulative principle, according to which the ultimate properties ot 
matter which form the basis of physical theory are not quantitative, 
insomuch that gravity, the law of which has a numerical expres- 
sion, is on that account not an ultimate quality. There is, how* 
ever, a noteworthy exception to this rule in the definition we have 
given of the ether. This medium was assumed to have the pro- 
perty of varying in pressure proportionally to variations in density. 
But this hypothesis is contradictory to the principle just mentioned 
of non-variability of ultimate properties. In addition to this, such 
relation between pressure and density is a law, actually pertaining 
to air of given temperature. Now, since it is the province ot 
theory to account for laws, this law of the ether should be referable 
to some ulterior cause. As respects the air, I have reason to say 
that the law may be accounted for by the dynamical action of the 
ether. It would seem, therefore, obvious to ascribe the existence 
of the same law in the ether to the action of another ether of still 
greater tenuity ; and so on. This inference respecting successive 
ethers is very analogous to the idea of “invisible universes*’ 
of successive orders proposed in pp. 170-172 of The Unseen 
Universe , on the agency of which the authors of that work lay 
great stress. But it seems to me much to be questioned whether 
there is reason to admit the reality of this succession of ethers in 
the sense in which we may admit the reality of the one ether 
whose existence and qualities we recognize by phenomena (see art. 
