205 
■which we know is not great enough to read the mind of God respecting 
matter without some especial assistance from Him for that express purpose. 
On His own part God has imagined the magnitudes and forms of His geo- 
metrical spheres as the simplest of all geometrical conceptions, and given to 
each of them material extension by ordaining their reciprocal impenetrability, 
at the same time making it physical as well as material by causing it to 
operate on other material spheres with a constancy of action that makes all 
the actions comparable, and therefore measurable by one another. To a mind 
infinite in capacity all this is unquestionably practicable ; but in order that 
our finite capacities may conceive materiality and the physical forces of 
matter, the human mind needs to be associated with an organism made up 
of matter and ruled by its forces. The material body is thus acted upon by 
external matter ; and the associated mind comprehends the action by virtue 
of that mysterious union with its companion, of which the reasoning faculty 
is conscious. Instead, then, of there being in this process an arrogating to 
human nature of the attributes of Divinity, as Mr. Warington has believed, 
there is a simple recognition of the very distinction taught by religion, 
natural and revealed. 
No opposition is made by any of my commentators to the doctrine of the 
immediate action of God’s moral will in the physical direction of His material 
universe, which supersedes the prevailing idea of automatic powers created 
for the purpose in some manner impossible to be conceived. Mr. Warington 
seems to object only to the change of moral into physical force in the case of 
creature mind, where of course the change can only be regarded as enacted 
by God on our vice-regency and entire responsibility, extending to intention as 
well as to action, the latter being restricted within limits God has seen fit to 
impose. I think Mr. Warington’s opinion will alter if he takes into con- 
sideration that were such a limitation not admissible on my theory, the cir- 
cumstance might be urged as a great drawback to its probability. 
I will only further add a few words relating to the reputed “ conservation 
of force,” to which my theory allows no quarter. The moral omnipotence of 
God is physical when it has made itself measurable by its action on matter, 
no action being the same under varying positions of matter with relation to 
one another. This is said to be the law of physical force denoting its power ; 
to me it simply denotes the quantity of physical force established under 
given circumstances by moral volition. The physical force possible in the 
universe is unlimited, because it is the moral power of God acting in a 
measurable form to an extent varying from time to time with variable re- 
quirements of physical nature. Subject to measure in a physical form, accord- 
ing to the magnitude required under any particular condition of the universe, 
each force will have at that particular moment a definite total to which its 
amount of action or effect will be the reciprocal. The total attraction of 
gravity, taken as an example, is never the same under varying distances ; and 
as much may be said of the electrical and calorifin attractions. As in all the 
cases distances are subject to variation, so it must follow that the general 
total of force in the universe cannot be conserved — not even if the individual 
