NATURAL THEOLOGY.

No. 1.-PROOFS OF DESIGN IN CREATION.

SUPPOSE a man to see for the first time one of our magnificent Cathedrals. He finds it in the usual form of a Cross, having however two transepts. Buttresses, rising into pinnacles, range along the walls, both of these and of the nave; and a square tower of great beauty soars upwards from the intersection of the nave and one of the transepts. Two other towers, possessing their peculiar attractions, crown and adorn the extremities of the Western front. He enters,

and beholds the vast extent of the perspective, embracing, in this instance, the entire length of the nave and choir; the great and unusual height of the ceiling; the ranges of lofty windows, emblazoned with all the glowing tints of heraldry, and pictured with the histories of Apostles, Saints, and Martyrs, admitting "a dim religious light" between the lofty arches; the exquisite and minute carving, resembling the delicacy of frostwork rather than aught coarser in nature; and the effigies of knights in their armour, and bishops in their mitres, and sacerdotal rulers and kings in their regal habiliments; and he gazes till admiration is sublimed to worship. Thus contemplating these harmonies, proportions, beauties, and adornments, can he for an instant suppose that chance arranged the stone and mortar into such sublime forms; or that some "fortuitous concourse of atoms" gave unintended birth to a result so glorious? Or can he for a moment hesitate to admit that MIND was the designing and contriving and directing Power, at whose bidding that pile of mingled loveliness and sublimity ascended towards the heavens ?

Suppose next we find our observer, who has never seen a drawing executed, nor knows in what manner it is done, viewing one of the Cartoons, and let it be that of "Paul preaching at Athens." He gazes on the commanding atti tude, and energetic action, and expressive countenance of the great Apostle; he glances at the other figures, and notices, with delighted wonder, the sympathetic cagerness of the converted Areopagite; the blended dignity and austerity of the Stoic; the fixed frown and threatening eye of the Cynic; the corporeal and mental tranquillity of the Epicurean; and the mingling of diffidence, piety, and awe, in the only female figure introduced into the composition. He next turns his gratified contemplation to the group from

the Academy in the centre, and to another group placed behind the Preacher; and in them also finds new objects of pleasure and approval. Descending from this general survey to a minuter examination, he marks what marvellous skill is displayed in the management of light and shade; and in the assignment to each figure, not only of the posture and expression, but even of the drapery, most accordant with its character. Lastly, he notices the dignity of the architecture, the propriety with which the statue of Mars is introduced facing his temple, and the exquisite management of the landscape; and he marvels in very deed at a display of such varied excellencies. Can he for a second suppose that any chance collision of paper and crayon, or of canvas and brush, produced figures so numerous and symmetrical; expressions so diverse and eloquent, attitudes so contrasted and appropriate; a composition so harmonious and artistic? Must he not, on the contrary, be instantaneously impressed by the conviction that all this is the result of INTELLECT, and not only so, but of Intellect of the largest capacity, and exercising its loftiest powers?

Suppose, once more, our sight-seer, never having beheld a clock or a watch, but aware by his own observation of the apparent motions of the chief heavenly bodies, and hitherto accustomed to measure time by the position of the sun in the firmament, or the lengthening shadows of the objects around him, to be suddenly transported to Strasburg. A friend takes him to see the celebrated clock, first made in the 16th century, and lately repaired and renovated. Before the clock he espies a globe, showing the motions of the heavens, stars and planets; the firmament revolving in twenty-four hours, Saturn in thirty years, Jupiter in twelve, Mars in two, the Sun, Mercury, and Venus in one year, and the moon in one month. Next, in the middle frame of the clock itself, he beholds an astrolabe, showing the sign in which each planet is on each day; and also statues of the seven planets known at the time of its formation, on a circular plate of iron, so that every day the planet that was formerly supposed to rule it comes forth, as the Sun upon Sunday, and so on throughout the week. Then his attention is directed to four statues of old men in the upper part of the clock, which strike the quarters. He sees the statue of Death come out at each quarter, as if intending to strike, but for the first three times it is driven back by the statue of Christ, with a spear in its hand. While he still looks,

however, the fourth quarter arrives, when the statue of Christ retires, and that of Death strikes the hour, with a bone which he carries in his hand, and then the chimes sound. Omitting to dwell on other statues, and on many most ingenious tables, his conductor at last points out to him, on the top of the entire frame-work, the figure of a cock, which twice a-day crows loudly and distinctly, and claps his wings in apparent exultation. Glancing at, lastly, and endeavouring to comprehend, so far as its intricacy and his own bewilderment will admit, the numerous assemblage of wheels within wheels which the interior presents; and seeing how exquisitely they are adapted to produce the various external motions with whose novelty and utility he had been so much delighted; can he doubt that the former were intended to secure the latter; and that these ends were designed, and these means for realising them contrived, by some acute and well-furnished Intelligence? Can he, without acting in direct hostility to the principles of his own nature, suppose that atoms of inanimate and irrational matter, by whatever affinities drawn together, have arranged themselves in these perfect forms; and not only so, but united the forms with each other in such a manner as to tell the motions of the planets, the seasons of the year, the days of the week, the hours of the day, and the minutes of each separate hour? And if he should come to such an astounding conclusion, should we not be justified in declaring that in his own mind there was some primeval deficiency; that his brain was probably in some abnormal condition; that he wanted some innate principle, or otherwise univerally acquired power of perception, which belonged to all others of our race; in fewer words, that he was not altogether human? It is not too much, then, to affirm, that by his very mental constitution, man is compelled from marks of design to infer a designer, and from marks of contrivance to infer a contriver, and from the existence of both design and contrivance to infer the existence of an Intelligence of which they are manifestations.

Turn we now our thoughts from earth to heaven, and limiting our contemplations to our Solar system, what do we there behold? Reckoning the four asteroids between Mars and Jupiter as one, and including the lately discovered Neptune, nine immense bodies, revolving at various vast distances, round a stupendous central one, whose bulk exceeds by many thousand times that of them all put together.

pre

Yet such is the supreme regularity of motion originally impressed upon them, that they have now maintained, unlost and unchanged, for millions upon millions of ages past, the same orbits in which they first travelled when beginning their everlasting round. How many things were necessary to be considered, how many calculations were to be previously made (for the discovery of but any one of which man's name is made on earth immortal), before this result could have been attained! First, the precise densities of the Planets had to be determined on, for if the Earth were lighter or heavier than its own bulk of arsenic, or Mercury than that of quicksilver, or Jupiter than that of coal, or Saturn than that of cork, their present precise distances from the Sun could not have been assigned to them, the sun's attraction and the motion originally given to each remaining the same. In like manner the densities of each body having been fixed, and the proximity or remoteness of each with respect to the central luminary, no other force but that exactly given to each would have imparted to it the velocity and length of orbit which it now possesses or describes. Nay, the determination of the very direction in which (so to speak) the first blow was struck on the body of each individual planet, which set it in motion, was an essential preliminary to it: travelling in that exact path and none other, which it now occupies. Thus, if our earth was to travel round the Sur in one of our years, or Mars in nearly two of our years, o Jupiter in twelve of our years, or Saturn in twenty-nine and a half of our years, or Uranus in eighty-four of our years. the attractive power of the sun, and also the distinct weights of these several bodies, and also their distance from the sun, and also the amount of speed in which, each should start on its celestial career; all these arrangements were needful to secure such results, and none other would have proved effectual. Moreover, without our globe's rotation on its axis, exactly in the time and at the rate in which it is accomplished, we could not have the precise alternations of day and night, with their attendant blessings, which we now possess. Neither, if the axis of our planet were inclined to the plane of its orbit more or less then it is, wonld our seasons be as they now are, nor all the beatitudes and beauties of summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. But we

must not forget that we are attended by a little planet of our own, to which we stand in the relationship of a centre, even our own benignant Moon, who not only blesses us with

her beams, but aids to rule the ebbs and flows of our oceans, and doubtless rains down upon us other "skiey influences" less obvious, but not less genial. If we now remember that Jupiter has four such satellites, that Saturn has seven, in addition to his magnificent double ring, that at least two of the six ascribed to Uranus have been discovered, and that others are supposed to attend on Neptune;-and if we conjecture that these all may like our own benefit the inhabitants, or sway the seas, the atmospheres, or the meteoric changes of the Planets on which they wait, what a proof does not even our own little system, however hastily regarded, afford us, of enlarged design, and most exquisite contrivance!

Not only, however, does the Sun attract the Planets, but they also attract him, yea, and sometimes when Jupiter and Saturn are on the same side of him, they, by their united power, draw him a little aside from his central position. The Planets also attract one another, and Jupiter especially produces sensible disturbances in the movements of Mars; while the other Planets generally draw the Earth aside from its precise path a little every year. Is there any danger that these variations should at any period, even after the lapse of myriads of ages, so increase, as to hurl any of these bodies entirely out of our system, and thus bring destruction on all that remain? No; (and this is one of the most magnificent facts realized by modern Astronomy) for these perturbations have a bound affixed to them, beyond which they cannot extend; and when they have reached it, a new series of changes is begun, which ends, after the lapse of enormous periods, in restoring them to their original positions. It was foreseen, therefore that the law of attraction should give rise eventually to such deviations, and provision was made from the first for their rectification! Is there not here design? is there not here contrivance ? are not these the manifestations, by the very constitution of our nature declared so to be, of Mind? To that designing and contriving Mind, we give the name of GOD.

CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN.

C. Y. M.

Do not imagine that we disparage the glory, or that we lightly esteem the power of Christianity, when we say it is the only Religion for the Female Sex; for though it was introduced for the good of the whole world, it produces much of this good by its effects on their condition,