derstanding, are still not by any means the result of any process of reasoning, but seem rather, as already intimated, like the implanted instincts of animals, to be a fundamental part of our mental constitution. These are described by Dr Abercrombie as six in number :

*

"1. A conviction of our own existence as sentient and thinking beings, and of mind as something distinct from the body.

"2. A confidence in the evidence of our senses in regard to the existence and properties of external things; or a conviction that these have a real existence independent of our sensations. "3. A confidence in our own mental processes-that facts, for example, which are suggested to us by our memory, really

occurred.

"4. A belief in our own personal identity, derived from the combined operation of consciousness and memory; or a remembrance of past mental feelings, and a comparison of them with present mental feelings as belonging to the same sentient being.

"5. A conviction that every event must have a cause, and a cause adequate to the effect.

"6. A confidence in the uniformity of the operations of nature; or that the same cause, acting in the same circumstances, will always be followed by the same effect.”

207. And whence came these impressions on the coinage of our nature-indestructible accompaniments of our mental being, written upon the soul as with a pen of light, to keep us right when prostituted reason would guide us into error? Obscured they may be, by the mists of Scepticism, or overlaid with the rubbish of unmeaning words; but the impression will remain for ever, and, brought into the sun-light of truth, will shine forth in all that freshness with which it was inscribed by the Creator's finger. In all the ordinary operations of life we proceed as though we considered these principles as axioms; and judge the man insane who refuses to be guided by them. We call no process of reason to our aid, to tell us why they

*It may be a question, whether some of these principles are not rather inductive than intuitive; but I have not chosen to reduce the number which Abercrombie gives.

should be so, but act upon them as indisputable facts, which reason did not teach us, and which it were vain for reason to dispute. Whence, then, this deep and almost indelible impression? Whence, but from HIM who implanted in its organization the instincts of the unreasoning creature; and stamped these few first principles on human consciousness, to hold a check upon us in our wanderings, and testify of His wisdom and goodness by whose power we were created ?

CHAPTER VIII.

DIFFICULTIES RAISED BY ATHEISTS, REGARDING THE WISDOM AND GOODNESS OF GOD, MET AND OBVIATED CONSIDERATION OF THE PRINCIPAL VIEWS WHICH HAVE BEEN PROMULGATED TO SHOW THAT MATERIAL THINGS FURNISH NO EVIDENCE OF DIVINE WISDOM AND GOODNESS; OR THAT A BELIEF IN CREATION IS NOT NECESSARY, IN ORDER TO ACCOUNT FOR WHAT IS NOW EXISTING -CHANCE-NECESSITY-NATURE-DEVELOPMENT.

208. IN devoting a portion of this Work, especially, to the obviating of such difficulties regarding the Divine wisdom and goodness as various Atheists have raised, I shall take first in order those which have reference to the facts of creation, and are brought forward for the purpose of proving that existing things do not testify to an intelligent and benevolent Creator. I shall next take up those objections which have reference to Doctrines arising out of the facts of creation; or attempts of the same perverted intellect to prove, that, if the Universe were the work of a wise and benevolent Creator, things would not be in the condition in which we find them.

209. That the more creative or imaginative of our mental faculties is subject, like the outward organ of vision, to be deceived and misled, will be readily allowed. But reason, as

well as fancy, has its optical delusions. Though given for the purpose of informing the judgment, and, amidst conflicting appearances, eliciting what is true, it yet, very frequently, is the occasion of mistake, either from too hasty deductions, or through insufficiently weighing the premises from which its conclusions are drawn. One of my children, when little more than two years old, after observing with strict attention the narrow crescent-shape of night's chief luminary, very dogmatically asserted that "somebody had broken the moon." Nor was it easy to dispel from his young mind this delusion of the reasoning faculty. He had previously observed it shining a full round orb, and now saw little more than a bare half-outline of its former splendour. Judging by "the evidence of his senses," the conclusion was a natural one, and, on the Atheistic principle of "rejecting all chimeras of the brain, and trusting only to the evidence of the senses," it was not only a natural, but a sound conclusion, that the moon had been broken.

210. Such is the process of semi-reason by which the Atheist has usually arrived at the conclusion, that this expanded Universe displays no marks of Intelligent contrivance and design. It is but too truly remarked, by the author of the so-called Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," that “ where our perceptive faculties are baffled we dream."

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211. In the course of my previous Chapters, while endeavouring to prove the existence of "a Being all-powerful, wise, and good, by whom everything exists," it was my object to obviate, in passing, such difficulties as rose naturally into view. Yet, to have given in such places a full consideration to certain Atheistical conceits would have necessitated a wandering from the proper subject of discourse. The answers then incidentally given, will, however, render any further notice of most of these difficulties unnecessary. I have, therefore, reserved only some prominent and more popular ones for separate consideration.

212. Enough has perhaps been said, in passing, of the theory of CHANCE, and the "fortuitous concourse of atoms." In the present day, that theory of the old Materialists-if I may dignify with the name of theory a mass of confused ideas tending to nothing-appears to find no advocates. I will, therefore,

* Mirabaud.

dismiss it with a few words. It is utterly impossible that such a "CAUSE" (so called) should be the origin of either existence or event. The word "Chance," as thus used, signifies, whenever any precise meaning can be attached to it, the concurrence of a plurality of bodies, moving from different quarters, withany known direction. But this is only an "effect," and not & cause. Nor could it have originated existence or motion, because both must have existed at once prior to, and in order to, its production.*

out

213. Under the name of NECESSITY, the "first cause " of Mirabaud, and the "mother of the world" of Shelley,—under the name of NATURE, a term frequently but little understood by those who use it,-and in the Lamarckian dream of DEVELOPMENT, as revived by the author of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and still more lately by Atkinson and Martineau, and, alas! by an Oxford Professor, the Rev. Baden Powell, and even yet more lately by Mr Charles Darwin, the grandson of one who pursued a similar dream in former years, -we find systems of error much more plausible, and, therefore, more calculated to mislead the mind.

214. Perhaps as clear a proposition of the theory of NECESSITY-as fair an embodiment of the popular saying, "I believe what is to be will be "- -as is usually met with, may be found in the statement of Atkinson:† "Whatever is, is right, and essential to the whole, and could not be otherwise than it is." Similar in purport are the words of Mirabaud: "If we reflect a little, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that everything we see is necessary; that it cannot be otherwise than it is; that all the beings we behold, as well as those which escape our sight, act by certain and invariable laws." In conformity with this view, matter is represented by the latter as being "necessarily existent," and motion, as a manner of existence that flows necessarily out of the essence of matter,” which "generates, preserves for a time, and successively destroys one part of the Universe by the other, while the sum of existence remains eternally the same."§

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* See, further, Brown's "Burnett Prize Essay," vol. i. p. 79.

† "Man's Nature and Development," by Atkinson and Martineau, p. 133. "System of Nature."

§ Ibid.

215. It would be foreign to my purpose to enumerate all the dreams of this so-called Philosopher: his suns incrusting themselves, and becoming extinguished; his comets changing into planets, and planets into comets; his production of the human race as 66 a necessary consequence of the disentangling* of our globe, or one of the results of the qualities, of the properties, of the energies, of which it is susceptible in its present position." By a number of mad, chaotic visions he attempts to overlay the order of creation, and show that its apparent order is only one phase of its confusion. But all is assumption; not a particle of evidence is offered in proof, while universal nature, as we have already seen, testifies to a regularity which is calculated to continue for ever, unless interfered with by the fiat of its Maker. It is true, that his conceit of nebulous matter gathering into worlds, which, by their own essential energies, clothe themselves with verdure, and fill themselves with living creatures, met, in the last age, with something like corroboration, when the telescope of Herschell first disclosed the nebulæ, which he fancied were suns or worlds in the process of formation. But so surely as the light succeeds the morning's dawn, so surely are the errors of the twilight of Science dispersed by its clearer day. La Place had previously demonstrated the stability of the Universe, and shown that the deviations in the planetary orbits are regular and compensatory; and now the telescope of Lord Rosse has demonstrated that these "worlds in the process of formation" are visions, as destitute of foundation in fact as were the theories of destruction once built upon planetary deviations. Thus, one by one, the outworks of Mirabaud have been thrown down by the progress of scientific discovery, until his "System of Nature" is reduced to the bare affirmationEverything we see is necessary, and cannot be otherwise than it is."

216. I have already shown that NECESSITY, if considered as a "law without a Legislator," an effect without a Cause, except its own inherent impulse, must operate alike at all times, and in all places; and, therefore, whatever is necessarily exist

*This "entangled" sentence forms a fair type of his philosophy.