fallen by chance, as in their proper place) in any one of those innumerable positions, furnished by the body; for example, on the top of the head, or on the soles of the feet: What would have become of the man? Suppose the mouth, the throat, the trachea, the lungs, the stomach, or the heart, to have been removed even a very little distance from their present places. How soon must life, if we suppose life at first to exist, be extinguished? Or rather, how impossible must it have been for life to exist at all? Were the hands and feet to interchange positions; were the thumb to grow from the back of the hand; or the joints of the fingers to be turned outwards, nearly every purpose which man is fitted to accomplish, must be entirely prevented. The truth is, all the parts of the human body are of high importance to our wellbeing, both as to their structure and their position, and very many of them are in both respects absolutely indispensable. A very small change in any one of these would be equally fatal to comfort and to life.

Whence then has it come to pass, that in so many millions of the human race, all the parts of the human body are exactly formed, and exactly placed, in their proper and relative position; that the blood has flowed in its thousand channels, and regularly returned to the fountains, in all its various courses; that the food has ever been digested; the processes of secretion carried on with exactness; the juices separated without mixture; and the nutriment of the whole body conveyed to every part, however minute, and however distant? That the organs of sensation have ever been formed; and the bones, muscles, and sinews, furnished with strength, and the nerves with sensitive perception; and that thus the body has become a frame, a tenement, suited to the inhabitation of an intelligent mind?

Let me further ask, has mere casualty been the source of contrivance, of thought, of volition, of virtue? Has an immaterial existence, possessed of these wonderful powers, started into being by a mere contingency? That the soul is immaterial, I shall, as I have before observed, attempt to prove in another Discourse, and shall therefore take it here for granted. Will it be held, that souls are also progenitors, and propagate each other, after chance has given birth to the first in the series?

The first proofs of design, viz. the provision of means, adapted evidently to the accomplishment of ends, are also found in every animal body; in every organized structure; in the mineral kingdom, to a vast extent; and universally in the figure, positions, motions, and appurtenances, of the worlds composing the planetary system. Their magnitudes, their distances from the sun, the position of theiraxes, their diurnal and annual revolutions, their furniture of moons; the central station, size, and splendour, of the vast luminous world around which they roll; the regularity and harmony of all their motions; are overwhelming proofs of design and wisdom, such as can be attributed only to a boundless and uncreated mind.

III. Atheists assert, that the several beings, found in the universe, owe their existence to the operations of matter.

In opposing this scheme we return again to arguments, derived from the connection between cause and effect: for here a cause is not only supposed, but directly alleged by the Atheist, and is regarded by him as being adequate to the production of all beings. It will be my business to prove from the inadequacy, and the consequent inefficacy, of the alleged causes, that it was not the real source of existence to the beings, visible in the world around us. For the accomplishment of this purpose, I observe,

1. That matter is acknowledged by the Atheist, with whom I am now arguing, to be destitute of intelligence; it being the great object of his scheme to prove, that his own existence, and that of other beings, was not derived from an intelligent cause.

2. The eternal existence of matter is a merely gratuitous supposition, unsupported by any evidence whatever.

As

3. If we admit, that matter existed from eternity, its properties and operations must all have been also eternal. the properties of matter are inherent in it, they must, in the case supposed, have been eternally inherent. Of course whatever powers matter possessed, it possessed them eternally; there being no cause, intrinsic or extrinsic, to increase, lessen, or alter them. Hence it is certain, that they must have operated from eternity, in every way in which they could operate All the beings therefore, and all the changes which its

operations could produce, it must have produced from eternity. Hence it is plain, that there must have been an eternal and infinite series of men, of animals, of vegetables, of motions, and of changes of every other kind, in the universe. But this has

been demonstrated to be a self-contradiction. The premises whence it is derived are therefore false. That matter should have possessed these powers from eternity, without exerting them, and that it should have exerted them from eternity, are thus proved to be, as I asserted in the former Discourse, plain impossibilities. It follows then undeniably, that if matter existed eternally in one uniform state, that state was entirely quiescent; and that no change, however small, could ever have taken place in it, but from an extrinsic cause. Thus the supposition of the eternal existence of matter is so far from accounting for the existence of the beings and the changes in the universe, that it will not account for any thing, not even for the least change in the position or circumstances of an

atom.

4. There is no fact which gives even the appearance of plausibility to this scheme. The only facts, which, so far as I know, have ever been seriously alleged to this purpose, are the production of insects, and plants, by what is called equivocal generation: according to which, by the mere fermentation of various kinds of matter, the insect is supposed to be produced without a parent, and the plant without a seed.

To this I answer,

(1) That this is at best a mere supposition, no evidence having been ever furnished of the fact which it alleges.

(2) Francisco de Redi, and Malpighi, two eminent Italian philosophers, have, by a long train of ingenious and accurate experiments, unanswerably proved, that equivocal generation is a groundless hypothesis; and that no matter, in any process of fermentation, will produce an insect without a parent, or a plant without a seed. As therefore all the powers and operations of matter must, if eternal, be eternally the same; and as matter now produces no such beings as are alleged; it follows unanswerably, that matter was never the cause of any such productions.

5. Innumerable facts directly refute this scheme.

(1) That this world, in its present form, was not eternal is certain; because its surface is continually changing, and

approximating towards a level. If we suppose one particle only to have descended from the higher towards the lower parts of the surface in an age, or in a million of ages; the whole, unless counteracted by opposing causes (and in most places there is no trace of such causes) must have become an entire level, at a period too distant to be conceived by any mind, or expressed by any numbers. annually descend towards the centre.

Yet millions of tons

The date of the earth,

in its present state, must therefore have begun at a time not far distant.

(2) If, contrary to truth, we admit gravitation to be an inherent property of matter, it could not possibly have caused the revolutions of the planets. Let the planets be placed at any supposable place and distance, within the reach of the sun's attraction; the only direction in which they could possibly move, would be a straight or right line towards the sun; because this is the only direction in which his gravitation and theirs can possibly act. It is easily and mathematically proved, that to the circular motion of the planets round the sun a projectile force or impulse, acting in the direction of a tangent to the planetary orbit, was originally indispensable. So far therefore would the planets have been from moving in their proper orbits round the Sun by the mere power of gravitation, that they could only have fallen directly to the Sun. Should it be said, that the planets have moved eternally in their present orbits; and that the Earth, for example, has performed an infinite series of revolutions; it must also be said, that the Moon in her circuit round the Earth has performed a series thirteen times, and the Earth in its rotation round its axis, a series three hundred and sixty-five times as great as that infinite series.

(3) The diurnal motions of the planets, the positions of their axes, and the attendance of their satellites, which accord with no regularity, or proportion to their magnitudes, or their distances from the Sun, and cannot be explained in any consistency with mere material principles, prove themselves, unquestionably, to have been derived from an extrinsic and intelligent cause.

6. From a sufficiently regular course of observations, employed on the eclipses of the Sun and Moon, and a series of correct calculations.concerning them, it is proved by Ferguson,

that the ancient eclipses, noted in history, took place at times, differing sensibly from those which the calculations require; that these differences of time regularly diminish, as the times approach nearer to us; and that the orbit of the Moon was therefore more distant from the Earth formerly, than it is now. Hence it is certain, that the Moon's motion round the Earth, instead of having been eternal, has existed only during a little period.

In the last place, for I will not dwell on this atheistical dream any longer, if all these impossibilities were removed, and all these proofs given up, another would still remain, which completely refutes this scheme; viz. that matter cannot be the cause of intelligence. Quod non habet, dare non potest; what a cause does not contain or possess, it cannot communicate, is a maxim, or self-evident proposition. That matter therefore, which cannot think, will, or originate motion, should communicate thought, volition, and motivity, is plainly impossible.

Thus have I considered the only atheistical schemes of existence, which merit any serious attention. Were I disposed to exhibit the abettors of these schemes in a ridiculous and contemptible light; the efforts of Anaximander, Epicurus, the Egyptian philosophers, the Count de Buffon, and many others both ancient and modern, to explain the origin and progress of things, would furnish me with ample materials. But such an exhibition would ill become this sacred place. I shall only add, that the existence of the very matter to which so much is attributed, and on which such reliance is placed, by atheistical philosophers, can never be evinced. I myself believe indeed that it exists, but I also know that its existence cannot be proved.

REMARKS.

From these observations it is evident,

1. That Atheism in all its forms is a specimen of the most absolute credulity. The three great atheistical schemes of existence here recited, and undoubtedly the best which have been formed, are founded on mere assumptions, or gratuitous hypotheses, unsupported by a particle of argument or evidence.