the ashes of the dead, in the temples erected by him in honour of the God whom he worships, there is a scrupulous regard had to proportion and outline. As wealth accumulates and taste is cultivated, the law of order and ornament comes to be valued for its own sake, and is followed in the construction of every house, and of every article of furniture in that house, in the setting of every jewel, and in the location of every ornament.

In most articles of human workmanship we may discover a greater or less attention to both of the principles to which we have referred. The farmer's stacks are all formed after a general mould, but we may observe a departure from it on either side to suit the quantity or quality of the grain. The merchant's shop seems to be regulated by forms or weights, but there is special form or average weight for every separate article. In some objects we see a greater regard to general plan, and in others to special purpose, and this according as persons wish to give a greater prominence at the time to ornament or to utility.

Now, if this world proceeds from intelligence, and if it is intended to be contemplated by intelligence, it is surely not unreasonable to suppose that there may be traces in it of the same two modes of procedure. In this treatise we hope to be able to shew that there are abundant illustrations of both, by an induction reaching over all the kingdoms of nature, and extending even into the kingdoms of grace. Both will be found in the theology of nature to point to the same conclusion; each furnishes its appropriate proof of the existence and wisdom of a Being who hath constructed everything on a plan, and made it, at the same time, to serve a purpose. The one, as well as the other, will be found in the dispensations of God, in the kingdom of his Son, and point to a most

interesting analogy between nature and revelation. It will be expedient to treat of them as so far different, which they really are, but it will be necessary, at the same time, to shew, what is equally true, that the two principles are made to correspond the one to the other, that they meet in a higher unity, and that, after all, they are but two aspects-in many respects different indeedof one Great Truth.1

In certain sections of this treatise it is proposed to unfold some of the more striking examples of General Plan. In respect of this order of facts, natural theology can now take a step in advance, in consequence of what has been done of late years in the discovery of homologies by the sciences of comparative anatomy and morphological botany. But the recent discoveries in regard to the homology of parts can never set aside the old doctrine of the teleology of parts, which affirms that every organ is adapted to a special end. Every organic object is constructed after a type, (TÚπos,) and is, at the same time,

1 In order to remove misapprehension, it may be.necessary here to estimate how much truth there is in a statement of Professor Owen, who has done so much to illustrate the subject of general order. "By whatever means or instruments man aids or supersedes his natural locomotive organs, such instruments are adapted expressly and immediately to the end proposed. He does not fetter himself by the trammels of any common type of locomotive instrument, and increase his pains by having to adjust the parts and compensate their proportions so as best to perform the end required without deviating from the pattern previously laid down for all. There is no community of plan or structure between the boat and the balloon, between Stephenson's engine and Brunel's tunnelling machinery; a very remote analogy, if any, can be traced between the instruments devised by man to travel in the air and on the sea, through the earth or along its surface." (Owen on the Nature of Limbs, p. 9.) There is truth in the remark here made, but it seems to us to be overstated and without the necessary corrections. Man does, in many cases, construct the works which are to serve a common end upon a common plan. There is a model structure for the boat, for the steam-engine, for our houses, and our temples, in which elegance is more or less attended to. But still it is to be admitted that the harmonies, the correspondences, the compensations, are far more numerous and beautiful, both in kind and degree, in the works of God than in the works of man. It is certain that the union of the two principles is not so frequently attended to in human as in Divine workmanship. Man is often obliged to sacrifice the one to the other, the symmetry to the convenience, or the utility to the ornament. It is only in the works of Deity that we find the two at all times in harmonious operation.

(τέλος.)

made to accomplish a final cause, (Téos.) Throughout the next Book we purpose to exhibit the traces of General Order in one series of sections, and the traces of Special Adaptation in another series of sections, the two being made to run alongside of each other. While both will be illustrated, it will be seen, by our adopting this method, that the two are not contradictory but coincident, that they do not cross but run parallel to each other. The general conformity to a pattern will be seen to be all the more curious when contemplated in connexion with certain singular deviations; while the special modifications will appear all the more wonderful when exhibited as a departure, and evidently an intentional departure, to effect a particular end, from a model usually attended to, nay, to some extent attended to, it may be, in the very structure which is thus modified. The designed irregularities will thus, by a legitimate reaction, shew that the regularities are also designed; the exceptions in this case emphatically prove the rule. The nature of the eccentricities demonstrate that, after all, there is a centre round which the revolution is performed; the deviations point to a disturbing influence also under the influence of law,-in much the same way as the deviations of an old planet were shewn by living astronomers to point to a previously undiscovered planetary body. The nature, the value, and the relation of the two principles, will thus come out to view more strikingly by comparison and contrast when they are placed in juxtaposition.

The arguments and illustrations adduced by British writers for the last age or two in behalf of the Divine existence, have been taken almost exclusively from the indications in nature of special adaptation of parts. Hence, when traces were discovered within the last age

of a general pattern, which had no reference to the comfort of the animal or the functions of the particular plant, the discovery was represented by some as overturning the whole doctrine of final cause; not a few viewed the new doctrine with suspicion or alarm, as seemingly adverse to religion, while the great body of scientific men did not know what to make of its religious import. The question is thus started, Have not the writers on the theology of nature been of late most unnecessarily narrowing and restricting the argument? We have found it most interesting to notice that the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, and not a few of the earlier writers on the subject in our own country, gave it a much wider range, and reckoned that they had found evidence of the existence of God whenever they detected traces of order and ornament. Let us inquire what instruction we can gather on this subject from some of those great luminaries of the ancient world, which, like stars, send their light down to us through the wide space which intervenes, and serve, like them, to enlarge and rectify our ideas of magnitude, and to keep us from being unduly impressed with the greatness of the near and the present.

Plato, in the Fourth Book of the Laws, makes Clinias of Crete, in proving the existence of God from his works, appeal at once to the order and beauty of the universe, and does not regard it as at all necessary to dwell on minute instances of adaptation. He refers to the earth, the sun, and all the stars, and to the beautiful arrangement of the seasons, divided into months and years, as evidencing that there is a Divine Being. In the review of the argument in the Twelfth Book, he repeats, that the orderly movements of the stars, and other objects,

1 B. I. c. 9, where he also brings in the argument from universal consent.

prove that all things were arranged and adorned, not by matter or necessity, but according to a Divine forethought and will. According to the sublime philosophy of Plato, all things are formed according to unalterable laws or types, which remain unchanged amidst the flux of individual objects, and that because they proceed from eternal ideas, which had been in or before the Divine mind from all eternity.

A similar style of argument is adopted in Cicero's Treatise on the Nature of the Gods, the most systematic work on natural theology which has been handed down to us from ancient times. The evidence adduced by Balbus the Stoic, the representative of theism in the dialogue by which the argument is conducted, is derived from four sources: first, from the presages of futurity by gifted men and oracles; secondly, from the number of things fit and useful; thirdly, from prodigies; fourthly, and highest of all, from the equable motions of the heavenly bodies, and from the beauty and order of the sun, moon, and stars, of which the very sight is sufficient to convince us that they are not fortuitous.2 Throughout his defence, he dwells on the consenting and conspiring motions of the heavenly bodies, on their progressions and other movements, all constant and according to law; he points to the planets, which are regular in their very wanderings; and shews how, in all this, there is an order and a certain likeness to art.3 When one observes, he says, their defined and equable motions, and all things proceeding in an appointed order, and by a regulated and unchangeable constancy, he is led to understand not only that there is an inhabitant in this celestial and divine dwelling, but a ruler or regulator, and, if we may so

1 B. xiii. c. 13.

2 Cic. De Nat. Deor., Lib. ii. c. v.

3 Lib. ii. c. vii.; XX.; Xxxii