PRELIMINARY INQUIRY. I. It is impossible for any man fairly to open his mind to the argument for the existence and attributes of God, derived from the appearances of DESIGN in nature, without perceiving that it is as complete as it is capable of being rendered,—and that these appearances are so perfect, so remarkable, and so much accumulated from every quarter, that there is no resisting the conclusion to which they lead. The fact is, that if there is any thing unsatisfactory in the argument, it is, that it becomes "dark from excess of light,”—that after going over, again and again, the same process of reasoning, wherever the materials for it are presented to us, and these are to be found wherever we choose to direct our inquiries,-we are bewildered in the very multiplicity of the proofs; and the infinitude of the Divine nature which thus rises upon us, more and more, at every successive step, is so much beyond the grasp of the limited comprehension of man, that it eludes us when we seem most securely to have laid hold of it. There is thus a species of scepticism produced with respect to the force of a description of proof, the result of which is less impressive than we should previously have concluded it to be, and we are apt to suspect that there is some secret flaw in it, which, although we cannot discover it, is in reality preventing it from producing that overpowering conviction which would seem to be its necessary consequence. Perhaps we should have more assurance that there can be no possible sophism in the argument, were we to be fully aware that it is not one for which we are indebted to the ingenuity of philosophers, but that it is, in truth, founded on observations which are constantly before the human mind, and which, I will venture to say, there is no one who has come to the use of reason who has not habitually made. They are, indeed, made so constantly that we come not to be conscious of them,— but we may, nevertheless, on a little reflection, be certain that they are made by all mankind, in all ages of their lives, and in every period of society. Is there a child, who knows any thing at all, that is not perfectly aware that his hands are instruments for lifting his food to his lips, as distinctly as, that the spoon in which he lifts it, is such an instrument? Does he not see the purpose, the design for which his hands are intended, as evidently as he knows the purpose of the spoon? Can he look at the one without connecting the notion of design with the use which he puts them to, any more than he can look at the other? He does not muse indeed, upon purposes and final causes as a philosopher would do, either in the case of the instruments of the divine workmanship, or those of which man is the artificer, but he is not the less aware that there are these purposes in both instances, and he practically applies the tools as they are given to him with a ready perception of the intention with which they were given. Is there a savage in the woods who does not perceive that the hide which he strips from the animal which he has killed, and throws around his own naked limbs, was intended for a covering to the animal while it was alive, no less than he intends it for a covering to himself? Does he not know that the tusks or the claws of the wild creatures, with which he contends, are as much their weapons of warfare as his bow and arrows are his? Is he ignorant that, when the light of the sun awakes him in |