232 
CS THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY. 
substances include marks of contrivance. But whatevei 
includes marks of contrivance, whatever, in its constitution, 
testifies design, necessarily carries us to something beyond 
itself, to some other being, to a designer prior to, and out 
of itself. No animal, for instance, can have contrived its 
own limbs and senses; can have been the author to itself 
of the design with which they were constructed. That 
supposition involves all the absurdity of self-creation, i. e. 
of acting without existing. Nothing can be God, which is 
ordered by a wisdom and a will which itself is void of, 
which is indebted for any of its properties to contrivance 
ab extra. The not having that in his nature which requires 
the exertion of another prior being (which property is 
sometimes called self-sufficiency, and sometimes self-com¬ 
prehension,) appertains to the Deity, as his essential dis¬ 
tinction, and removes his nature from that of all things 
which we see. Which consideration contains the answer 
to a question that has sometimes been asked, namely: Why, 
since something or other must have existed from eternity, 
may not the present universe be that something? The 
contrivance perceived in it proves that to be impossible. 
Nothing contrived can, in a strict and proper sense, be 
eternal, forasmuch as the contriver must have existed before 
the contrivance. 
Wherever we see marks of contrivance, we are led for 
its cause to an intelligent author. And this transition of 
the understanding is founded upon uniform experience. 
We see intelligence constantly contriving; that is, we see 
intelligence constantly producing effects, marked and dis¬ 
tinguished by certain properties; not certain particular 
properties, but by a kind and class of properties, such as 
relation to an end, relation of parts to one another, and to 
a common purpose. We see, wherever we are witnesses 
to the actual formation of things, nothing except intelli¬ 
gence producing effects so marked and distinguished. Fur¬ 
nished with this experience, we view the productions of 
nature. We observe them also marked and distinguished 
in the same manner. We wish to account for their origin. 
Our experience suggests a cause perfectly adequate to this 
account. No experience, no single instance or example, 
can be offered in favor of any other. In this cause, there¬ 
fore, we ought to rest; in this cause the common sense of 
mankind has, in fact, rested, because it agrees with that 
which in all cases is the foundation of knowledge,—the 
undeviating course of their experience. The reasoning is 
the same as that by which we conclude any ancient ap- 
