On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    treme simplicity , and the vast multiplicifj ^ of obvious and decisive evidences that may everywhere be found for its illustration . " The great book of the universe lies open to all mankind , and he who cannot read in it the name

    and the titles of its Author , will probably derive but little benefit from the labours of any commentator : their instructions may elucidate a few dark passages , and exalt our admiration of many that we already perceive to be beautiful ; but the bulk of the

    volume is legible without assistance : and much as we may find out by study and meditation , it will still be as nothing in comparison with what is forced upon our apprehension . " No person accustomed to reason , or even but slightly reflect upon what he is ever \ dav the witness of , can

    possibly doubt that there are abundant marks of design in the universe : and any enumeration of the instances in which this design is manifest , appears at first sight unnecessary . It is however a fact that cannot be disputed , that all persons do not reason from nor reflect upon even the plainest marks of wisdom and benevolence

    exhibited in the creation . It is true that a single example might be as conclusive with regard to the contrivance manifested in the world as a thousand ; and he who could not discover the most evident marks of wise design in

    the formation of an eye or an ear , did he perfectly understand the structure of these organs , would be deaf to any arguments offered to his mind to prove the existence of a wise , a benevolent and designing first cause .

    The ancient sceptics had nothing to set up against a designing Deity , but the doctrine of Chance and the combination of a chaos of atoms in endless motion . The task of their opponents

    therefore was not at all difficult : they appealed at once to the order and symmetry that pervaded the whole of nature , and to the regularity and inagr nificence of the structure of the

    universe . The phenomena of the heavens , in particular , appear to have arrested their attention , and the magnitude and uniformity of the planetary motions afforded in their estimation , a sufficient proof not only of Divine power , but intelligence also .

    To modern sceptics the exclamation of Dr . Beattie , from his Elements of Moral Science , may be fitly addressed :

    Untitled Article

    " The man who should suppose a large city consisting of a thousand palaces , all finished in the minutest parts and furnished with the greatest eJegance and variety of ornament , and with all sorts of books , pictures and statues executed in the most ingenious

    manner , to have been produced by the accidental blowing of winds and rolling of sands would justly be accounted irrational , but to suppose the universe , or our solar system , or this earth / ' or even the human frame , " to

    be a work of undesigning chance , is an absurdity incomparably greater . " Astronomy and anatomy are indeed the studies which present us with the most striking- view of the two greatest attributes of the Supreme Being . The first of these fills the mind with the

    idea of his immensity , m the largeness , distances and number of the heavenly bodies , the last , which we mean to form the first part of our arrangement astonishes with the intelligence ancj . art in the variety and delicacy of animal mechanism .

    The human body has been represented under the name of " Microcosmus , " as if it did . not differ so much from the universal system of mature , in the symmetry and number of its parts , as in their size . Galen ' s

    excellent treatise on the use of those parts > entitled " De usu Partium Corporis humani ; " and which was written in ihe second century of the Christian era , was composed as a sort of prose hymn to the Creator , and it abounds with the most

    irresistible proofs of a supreme cause and overruling providence : and Cieero , who flourished two centuries and a half prior to Galen dwells more on the structure and economy of animals , than on all the other productions of nature , when he wishes to demonstrate the existence of the Gods from the

    order and beauty of the universe . It is not , however , my intention to carry the reader back to the works of the ancients : among the moderns we have the subject amply and feelingly discussed , by persons who have considered ( he structure and functions of animals with direct reference to the

    display of the perfections of the Creator ; such , in many instances has been the object of a Ray , a ]> erhaui , arid a Paley , to whose volumes we shall have frequeat occasion to recur , ancj of whose labour ^ we shall , without

    Untitled Article

    36 . Natural Theology , No . L

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1815, page 36, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1756/page/36/