demand such departure; and miracles, instead of warring against, would concur with nature.

"Now we Christians maintain that such a case has existed. We affirm that when Jesus Christ came into the world, nature had failed to communicate instructions to men, in which, as intelligent beings, they had the deepest concern, and on which the full developement of their highest faculties essentially depended; and we affirm, that there was no prospect of relief from nature; so that an exigence had occurred in which additional communications, supernatural lights, might rationally be expected from the Father of Spirits."

Nothing can be stated with more clearness and simplicity than the views here given. But I am bold to confess, that in my humble opinion, they savour too much of false analogies.

1. I cannot unhesitatingly assent to the sentiment that order is beautiful in the sight of God and man only as a means to an end. If it have not a certain intrinsic worth, can it have any vitality as a means? And again, is not our perception of the orderly structure of the human frame, for instance, antecedent to any knowledge of the fitness of its organization for the purposes of life? When we contemplate the regularity of the natural world, can we help feeling that the Creator delights in order and beauty, and that when, as the account of the creation says, He pronounced all things good, it was not merely for the uses they would serve as means, but also for a certain intrinsic goodness?

2. That the Divine methods might clog the Divine pur

poses and require to be varied and changed, that exigencies might occur in the Divine works and ways, seem to me impossible and offensive suppositions. But much more offensive is it to hear it affirmed, in so many words, that Nature has failed to accomplish aught.

3. I shrink, too, from the familiarity with the ways and purposes of the Infinite Mind implied in the foregoing statement. It may be admitted that there is no presumption in regarding the improvement of moral and intelligent beings as the chief care of the Deity. But then can we limit the existence of intelligent beings to this little corner of Creation? Can we suppose that there are not multitudes of minds of a higher order, and at every different degree of advancement, in other of the many mansions of the universe, and that the order of Nature has reference to their education as well as to ours? At least, is it not presumptuous to decide that Nature has failed, because within a period, which, though embracing some thousands of years, is still a limited period, a small portion of God's moral and intelligent family, a part of the race of man, has been wrapt in ignorance and error? By precisely the same mode of reasoning by which Nature is affirmed to have failed, might we not maintain the insufficiency of the Christian Revelation? Christianity has been in the world hundreds of years, and thousands have come and gone, unblest by a single ray of its light. We see plainly enough that it would be unfair to draw any inference from this fact, unfavourable to the completeness of Christianity. For this Dispensation, we perceive, is

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expansive and progressive, and is destined in the course of time to be spread over the whole world. In the meanwhile, those who live and die without enjoying its light, are still, we believe, the subjects of a wise discipline and an infinite Providence; and in another state they may indirectly enjoy the benefits of Christianity through the ministration of minds which Christianity has enlightened and sanctified. And why may we not suppose that it is exactly the same with the great order of Nature? How can we deny-I had almost said, how can we doubt-that the grand system of creation, even though it have exerted no direct influence upon the interests of mind in this our sphere, in a few computed centuries and measured square miles," has been dispensing the most beneficent influences in other parts of the moral and intelligent household of Heaven, influences destined to act in one way or another in the progress of time upon this world, and of which, for aught we know, the Christian Dispensation itself may be, in the infinite interchanges of the universe, the fruit and the embodiment? Is it explicitly affirmed that a case has occurred in which the order of Nature has shown itself incapable of furnishing needed guidance? I am aware that a vast deal of erudition has been employed in support of this assertion. To establish it, the world before Christianity has been explored with immense labour. Still I say it is a mere matter of opinion. It has not been unquestionably proved that such is the fact. What if it were asserted, in direct contradiction to this opinion, that the order of Nature had done wonders

for the human mind before the appearance of Christianity, that it had prepared mankind for Christianity, that considering its probable uses, ends, issues in other, higher and grander spheres and relations, it had at the same time had no slight influence in elevating the human race, and in disposing the human mind for the introduction of the Christian Religion. I grant these are mere assertions; but putting out of view all evidence of one kind or another, may we not contend that they are fully as agreeable to our best conceptions of God and his Providence as the opposite affirmations? At all events, admitting that the world was in the deepest moral darkness, unvisited by any spiritual light before the coming of Christ, I still prefer to regard Christianity not as in any sense interrupting the order of Nature, but as harmonizing with it, in all respects, in the letter as well as in the spirit.

4. But these are subordinate considerations. The chief objection to the reasoning upon which I presume to remark, is, that it is based upon the merest assumption. It takes for granted, that the whole order of Nature is known to us, that the limits of our knowledge are commensurate with all the laws and modes of existence. Because, if it is not so, if our knowledge is not thus complete, how can we presume so much as to speak even of a violation of, or a departure from the order of Nature? The truth is, and it would seem only necessary to hint at it, to bring it to mind with overpowering force, our knowledge, so far from possessing anything like completeness, is most imperfect. We stand but on the borders of the tremendous

abyss of being. We have caught but a distant glimpse of its great author. "How faint the whisper we have heard of him!"* We see but a portion of Nature, and that portion, how superficially! We need not mourn over our ignorance, for the acknowledgment of it is the beginning of all sound wisdom. If we were only sensible of our ignorance, how should we be saved from that presumption which is the parent of countless errors !†

* Job xxvi. 14. Noyes's Translation.

† The following passage, in which Bishop Butler furnishes a general answer to objections against the goodness and wisdom of God's moral government, by reminding men of their ignorance, must have equal force in checking the haste with which we pronounce upon departures from the order or scheme of things. "In this great scheme of the natural world, individuals have various peculiar relations to other individuals of their own species. And whole species are, we find, variously related to other species upon this earth. Nor do we know how much farther these kinds of relations may extend. And, as there is not any action or natural event, which we are acquainted with, so single and unconnected as not to have a respect to some other actions and events, so possibly each of them, when it has not an immediate, may yet have a remote natural relation to other actions and events, much beyond the compass of this present world. As it is obvious that all events have future unknown consequences, so if we trace any as far as we can go, into what is connected with it, we shall find that if such event were not connected with somewhat farther in nature unknown to us, somewhat both past and present, such event could not possibly have been at all. Nor can we give the whole account of any one thing whatever, of all its causes, ends, and necessary adjuncts; those adjuncts, I mean, without which it could not have been. By this most astonishing connexion, these reciprocal