17 PART II. ON THE NATURAL EVIDENCES OF THEOLOGY AS DEDUCED FROM THE SEVERAL BRANCHES OF SCIENCE. IN continuing the subject opened in my last Address, it becomes my present duty to enter upon an introductory survey of the general nature of those evidences of religion to which it will be the business of the present Course to direct your attention. And first, as preliminary in point of order and method, we have to examine those countless attestations which the universal design pervading the whole frame of nature bears to the existence of a great intelligent First Cause. The short outline indeed which I can now offer, will I doubt not be much more ably filled up by those whom I am most happy to have as my colleagues in this duty: yet some general and preliminary notice seems to me a natural portion of the Inaugural Address; and the opportunity of casting a general glance, however slight, over subjects so calculated to draw out all our highest faculties to their utmost stretch in admiration and adoration, is so gratifying to every feeling of my mind, as to lead me irresistibly forward. I have to begin, then, with pointing out the general line of argument to be drawn from our scientific examination of the works and laws of Nature as they are usually called; but which; as we shall see in every place and at every moment, proclaim in terms not to be overlooked or mis C understood, the great Author of Nature. When we see all around, myriads and myriads of combinations which it would be utterly ridiculous and against every principle of reason and philosophy to ascribe to chance, continually presenting themselves; all directed by the most exquisite skill to ends the most extensively beneficial, it is absolutely impossible for any sane mind to doubt of the Intelligence which has arranged, and which perpetually governs those combinations; and the whole doctrine of final causes stands forth in its full lustre. Narrow and very ill-informed views may sometimes indeed have led to the overlooking these causes, as if less directly connected with science; but in truth, the final causes are generally much more strictly and fully within our cognisance than the efficient or material causes of nature. What may be the material essence of light, or in what manner it can affect our senses through the medium of the nerves, we are, and must probably ever remain, ignorant: but the useful ends for which it was necessary that we should thus become acquainted with the external objects of nature, we know full well. In proceeding, I shall at present attempt only to take the briefest general survey possible of the abundant illustrations of these final causes, which every branch of science you can pursue presents. DYNAMICS. At the first portal of Science is placed the mathematical investigation of the primary laws of matter and motion, or what are called Dynamics. Now here we have to observe the universal appli cation of these laws, and the infinite multiplicity of ends attained by the efficiency of a few simple principles; to the action of which, therefore, the whole frame of nature, throughout all its parts, must be nicely adjusted; the physical constitution of all its masses, and the mechanical structure of every living frame it contains requiring to be regulated in exact accordance with them. One of our poets has observed, not more beautifully than philosophically, that "The very law that moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, The wing of the meanest and minutest insect which the passing breeze wafts by us, even those which man requires the aid of the microscope to enable him to discern, must have its muscular powers, and the mechanism by which they act, as exquisitely adjusted to the operation of those laws in the medium in which it lives and moves and has its being, as the grand mass of Jupiter majestically sailing, surrounded by its attendant moons, through the vast plains of æther. ASTRONOMY. Astronomy, however, undoubtedly affords the most sublime exemplification of these laws, and that which has in every age been considered as affording the noblest illustration of the wisdom and power of the great First Cause. To this the inspired Psalmist repeatedly alludes in his loftiest and warmest devotional strains; and as he informs us, "That the words of these heavenly bodies had gone out to the ends of the world, and there was no tongue or language where their voice was not heard; so we shall find that it was from hence that those unblest with Revelation were enabled to approximate most nearly to some just conceptions of the Divine attributes. Classical antiquity has bequeathed to us no finer address to the Deity than the Hymn of Cleanthes the Stoic, in which we read, Σοι μεν πας ὧδε κόσμος ελλισσομενος περί γαίαν Πειθεται ἡ κεν αγης, και εκων ὑπο Σειο κρατείται. "This circling universe, its willing way Bends where thou biddst, and worlds thy Word obey." Here the first remarkable instance of design and contrivance is the exactly adjusting the projectile force which impels every planet in its course to the attractive power which draws it towards the central sun, in that single proportion which enables these forces by their composition to produce orbits very nearly circular: as we know that the one of these forces (gravitation) varies in each planet, the other (the projectile force) must of course vary also. In each instance, out of the infinite possible number of combinations of these forces, but one would produce the ellipses of small eccentricity which are actually described, and of the great advantages of which, in regulating the seasons, we are well aware in our own case, and may extend our inferences as far as analogy warrants our believing that the beings inhabiting the planetary system generally are at all of similar nature. Now, that the frequent recurrence of this particular combination is by no means the result of any physical necessity of the case, is evident, from the orbits which have been ascertained to belong to the comets, which occasionally in one part of their path approach so nearly to the sun as to be heated two thousand times more than red-hot iron; and in another become so remote, as to view the sun only as we do a fixed star, and to derive scarcely more of light or heat from his beams. Now assuredly it were too hasty to conclude that even such conditions preclude every modification of life. Undoubtedly it were more agreeable to all that we know of the dispensations of Him who filleth all space with things living, and all things living with his goodness, to believe that. the infinite treasures of his wisdom may also have provided creatures calculated to endure even these extreme circumstances; or have (as we see done in many known instances) allayed and mitigated them by some secret compensations, so as to have rendered them tolerable*. Still we here see, at any rate, how nicely the constitution of the creatures inhabiting our own planet is adjusted to its path, a path evidently impressed upon it by design; for, as I have said, it is one only out of millions of possible combinations, which could * Thus we know the heat imparted by the solar beams to vary with the rarefaction or condensation of the surrounding atmosphere: rarefied air (as we experience on the summits of mountain chains) having its capacity for heat so increased as to absorb and render latent large supplies of it, which in ⚫ a condensed state it readily emits and imparts to surrounding objects. Now we may infer from the phænomena of their tails, that the atmospheres of comets are greatly rarefied at their perihelion; so that they may perhaps there absorb and conceal much of the heat, which, being equally condensed in the aphelion, may be thus given out when most required. |