GOD 
i 
try till the English had made depredation 
upon it, and that they are, in fact, the de- 
parted spirits of the murdered Indians. In 
Carolina the lower class of people look 
upon them as birds of ill omen, and are 
gloomy and almost melancholy if one alights 
on the house or near the door, and begins 
its call, which they will sometimes do, even 
on the very threshold, imagining that it is a 
sure prognostic of the death of one of tire 
family. , 
GOBIUS, the goby, in natural history, a 
genus of fishes of the order Thoracici. 
Generic character: head small; eyes ap- 
proximated, with two punctures between 
them; gill membrane, four-rayed; ventral 
fins, united into a funnel-like oval ; dorsal 
fins two. There are twenty-five species, of 
which we shall notice tire following, G. 
niger, or the black goby, is about six inches 
in length. It inhabits the Mediterranean 
and North Seas, and often, in summer, 
when it deposits its spawn enters the 
mouths of rivers for that purpose. It is 
eaten, but not highly valued. The ventral 
fins unite into a species of funnel, by which 
this fish is said often to attach itself almost 
inseparably to stones and rocks. It lies 
chiefly under stones ; and its food consists 
of worms, insects, and the young of small 
fishes. For another speeies, the lanceolated 
goby, see Pisces, Plate IV. fig. 4. 
GOD, Deus, the Supreme Being, the 
first cause or creator of the universe, and 
the only true object of religious worship. 
The Hebrews called him Jehovah ; which 
name they never pronounced, but used in- 
stead of it the words Adonai, or Elohim. 
God, says Sir Isaac Newton, is a relative 
term, and has respect to servants. It de- 
notes, indeed, an eternal, infinite, absolutely 
perfect being : but such a being without 
dominion, would not be God. x Thc word 
God frequently signifies lord, but every lord 
is not God. The dominion of a spiritual 
being, or lord, constitutes God ; true do- 
minion, true God. From such true domi- 
nion it follows that the true God is living, 
intelligent, and powerful ; and from his other 
perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely 
perfect. He is eternal and infinite ; omni- 
potent and omniscient ; that is, he endures 
from eternity to eternity, and is present 
from infinity to infinity. He governs all 
things that exist, and knows all things that 
are to be known. He is not eternity or 
infinity, but eternal and infinite. He is not 
duration and space, but he endures and is 
present ; he endures always, and is present 
every where ; and by existing always and 
GOD 
every where, constitutes the very things we 
call duration and space, eternity and infinity. 
He is omnipresent, not only virtually, but 
substantially ; for power without substance 
cannot subsist. All things are contained 
and move in him, but without any mutual 
passion ; that is, he suffers nothing from the 
motions of bodies, nor do they undergo any 
resistance from his omnipresence. 
It is confessed, that God exists necessa- 
rily ; and by the same necessity he exists 
always and every where. Hence also he 
must be perfectly similar ; all eye, all ear, 
all brain, all arm, all perception, intelli- 
gence, and action; but after a manner not 
at all corporeal, not at all like men ; after 
a manner altogether unknown to us. He is 
destitute of all body and bodily shape, and 
therefore cannot be seen, heard, or touch- 
ed ; nor ought to be worshipped under the 
representation of any thing corporeal. We 
know him only by his properties, or attri- 
butes, by the most wise and excellent 
structure of things, and by final causes: 
but we adore and worship him only on ac- 
count of his dominion; for God setting aside 
dominion, providence, and final causes, is 
nothing but fate and nature. 
The plain argument, says Mr. Maclaurin, 
for the existence of the deity, obvious to 
all, and carrying irresistible conviction 
with it, is from the evident contrivance 
and fitness of things for one another, which 
we meet with throughout all parts of the 
universe. There is no need of nice or sub- 
tle reasonings in this matter; a manifest 
contrivance immediately suggests a contri- 
ver. It strikes us like a sensation, and art- 
ful reasonings against it may puzzle us, but 
without shaking our belief. No person, 
for example, that knows the principles of 
optics and the structure of the eye, can be- 
lieve that it was formed without skill in 
that science, or that the ear was formed 
without the knowledge of sounds, or that 
the male and female, in animals, were not 
formed for each other, and for continuing 
the species. All our accounts of nature are 
full of instances of this kind. The admir- 
able and beautiful structure of things for 
final causes, exalt our idea of the contri- 
ver: the unity of design shows him to be 
one. The great motions in the system, 
performed with the same facility as the 
least, suggest his almighty power, which 
gave motion to the earth and the celestial 
bodies with equal ease as to the minutest 
particles. The subtilty of the motions and 
actions in the internal parts of bodies, 
shows that his influence penetrates the in- 
