Our own inference would have been diametrically

the opposite of this.

Because we see not how,
It is a strange argument

we should say not how.
to found, as Clarke and Wollaston have done, on
the impotence and incapacity of the human mind,
that its very ignorance should authorize it to sport
such positive and peremptory dogmata as have
been advanced by them on the high mysteries of
primeval being and primeval causation.

12. Dr. Clarke's style of reasoning upon this subject, has now fallen into utter disesteem and desuetude. He himself disclaims the old scholastic methods of argumentation, while there is much of his own that now ranks with the impracticable subtleties of the middle ages. He deals in the categories of a higher region than that which is at all familiar to human experience—and we fear that when he attempts to demonstrate the non-eternity of matter, and that to spirit alone belong the attributes of primeval necessity and self-existence, he leaves behind him that world of sense and observation within which alone the human mind is yet able to expatiate. After the modest declaration of Dr. Reid, it may be presumptuous in us to pass upon this argument a summary and confident rejection.

But we may at least confess the total want of any impression which it has made upon our understanding—and that with all our partialities for the argumentum a posteriori, we hold it with Paley greatly more judicious, instead of groping for the evidence of a Divinity among the transcenaental generalities of time, and space, and matter, and spirit, and the grounds of a necessary and

eternal existence for the one, while nought but modifications and contingency can be observed of the other-we hold it more judicious simply to open our eyes on the actual and peopled world around us or to explore the wondrous economy of our own spirits, and try if we can read, as in a book of palpable and illuminated characters, the traces or the forth-goings of a creative mind anterior to, or at least distinct from matter, and which both arranged it in its present order and continues to overrule its processes.

13. Nevertheless, let us again recommend the perusal of Clarke's Demonstration. One feels himself as if placed by it on the border of certain transcendental conceptions, the species of an ideal world, which men of another conformation may fancy, and perhaps even see to be realities. And certain it is, that the very existence of such high thoughts in the mind of man may be regarded as the presentiment or promise of a high destination. So that however unable to follow out the reasonings of Clarke or Newton, when they convert our ideas of infinity and eternity into the elements of such a demonstration as they have bequeathed to the world-nothing, we apprehend, can be more just or beautiful than the following sentences of Dugald Stewart, when he views these ideas as the earnests of our coming immortality:-" Important use may also be made of these conceptions of immensity and eternity, in stating the argument for the future existence of the soul. For why was the mind of man rendered capable of extending his views in point of time, beyond the limit of human

transactions; and, in point of space, beyond the limits of the visible universe-if all our prospects are to terminate here; or why was the glimpse of so magnificent a scene disclosed to a being, the period of whose animal existence bears so small a proportion to the vastness of his desires? Surely this conception of the necessary existence of space and time, of immensity and eternity, was not forced continually upon the thoughts of man for no purpose whatever? And to what purpose can we suppose it to be subservient, but to remind those who make a proper use of their reason of the trifling value of some of those objects we at present pursue, when compared with the scenes on which we may afterwards enter; and to animate us in the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, by affording us the prospect of an indefinite progression ?"*

14. Before leaving this subject, we would remark on what may be called a certain subordinate application of the a priori argument-not for the demonstration of the being, but for the demonstration of the attributes of God. Dr. Clarke himself admits the impossibility of proving the divine intelligence in this way-though, with this exception, he attempts an a priori proof for the other natural attributes of the Godhead and the argument certainly becomes more lucid and convincing as he carries it forward from these to the other attributes. The goodness, the truth, the justice of the Divinity, for example, may not only be inferred by an ascending process of discovery from the works

* Stewart's Philosophy of the Moral and Active Powers. Vol. I. p. 336.

and the ways of God-but they are also inferred
by a process of derivation from the power, and the
unity, and the wisdom. From the amplitude of
His natural, they infer the equal amplitude of His
moral characteristics,-judging Him superior to
falsehood, because He is exempted from the temp-
tations to weakness; and to malignity because
exempted from the temptations to rivalship; and to
caprice because in the perfection of his wisdom
there is the full guarantee for his doing always
what is best. We give these merely as specimens
of a style of reasoning which we shall not stop to
appreciate and instead of attempting any further
to excogitate a Deity in this way; let us now
search if there be any reflection of Him from the
mirror of that universe which he has formed.
may be a lowlier-but we deem it a safer enter-
prise-instead of groping our way among the in-
comprehensibles of the a priori region, to keep by
the certainties which are spread out before us on
the region of sense and observation to look at the
actual economy of things, and thence gather as we
may, such traces of a handiwork as might announce
a designer's hand-to travel up and down on that
living scene which can be traversed by human
footsteps, and gazed at with human eyes-and
search for the impress, if any there be, of the in-
telligent power that either called it into being, or
that arranged the materials which compose it.

It

15. But our examination of the a priori reasoning will not be thrown away-if it guide our attempts to separate the weak from the strong parts of the Theistical argument. More especially

it should help us to discriminate between the inference that is grounded on the true existence of matter, the inference that is grounded on the orderly arrangements of matter. The argument for the being of a God drawn from the former consideration, tinged as it is throughout with the a priori spirit we hold to be altogether mystical and meaningless-insomuch that for the doctrine of an original creation of matter we hold it essential that the light of revelation should be superadded to the dull and glimmering light, or rather perhaps to the impenetrable darkness of nature. We agree with Dr. Brown in thinking "that matter as an unformed mass, existing without relation of parts, would not of itself have suggested the notion of a Creator since in every hypothesis something material or mental must have existed unçaused, and since existence, therefore, is not necessarily a mark of previous causation, unless we take for granted an infinite series of causes." In the mere existence of an unshapen or unorganized mass, we see nothing that indicates its non-eternity or its derivation from an antecedent mind-while on the other hand, even though nature should incline us to the thought that the matter of this earth and these heavens was from everlasting, there might be enough in the goodly distribution of its parts to warrant the conclusion that Mind has been at work with this primeval matter, and at least fetched from it materials for the structure of many a wise and beneficent mechanism. It is well that Revelation has resolved for us the else impracticable mystery, and given us distinctly to understand, that to the fiat of great