PROSPECTIVE CONTRIVANCES. 
147 
having been able to make milk out of grass, we have, 
secondly, the organ for its reception and retention; we have, 
thirdly, the excretory duct, annexed to it; and we have, 
lastly, the determination of the milk to the breast, at the 
particular juncture when it is about to be wanted. We 
have all these properties in the subject before us; and 
they are all indications of design. The last circumstance 
is the strongest of any. If I had been to guess beforehand, 
I should have conjectured, that at the time when there 
was an extraordinary demand for nourishment in one part 
of the system, there would be the least likelihood of a re¬ 
dundancy to supply another part. The advanced preg¬ 
nancy of the female has no intelligible tendency to fill the 
breast with milk. The lacteal system is a constant won¬ 
der; and it adds to other causes of our admiration, that 
the number of the teats and paps in each species is found 
to bear a proportion to the number of the young. In the 
sow, the bitch, the . rabbit, the cat, the rat, which have 
numerous litters, the paps are numerous, and are disposed 
along the whole length of the belly: in the cow and mare 
they are few. The most simple account of this, is to re¬ 
fer it to a designing Creator. 
But, in the argument before us, we are entitled to con¬ 
sider not only animal bodies when framed, but the circum¬ 
stances under which they are framed: and in this view 
of the subject, the constitution of many of their parts is 
most strictly prospective. 
III. The eye is of no use at the time when it is formed. 
It is an optical instrument made in a dungeon; construct¬ 
ed for the refraction of light to a focus, and perfect for its 
purpose, before a ray of light has had access to it; geo 
metrically adapted to the properties and action of an ele¬ 
ment with which it has no communication. It is about 
indeed to enter into that communication; and this is pre¬ 
cisely the thing which evidences intention. It is provid¬ 
ing for the future in the closest sense which can be given 
to these terms; for it is providing for a future change, not 
for the then subsisting condition of the animal, not for 
any gradual progress or advance in that same condition, 
but for anew state, the consequence of a great and sudden 
alteration, which the animal is to undergo at its birth. Is 
it to be believed that the eye was formed, or, which is the 
same thing, that the series of causes was fixed by which 
the eye is formed, without a view to this change; without 
a prospect of that condition, in which its fabric, of no use 
at present, is about to be of the greatest; without a con- 
