is not to strengthen our confidence in the constancy of nature's sequences-but to ascertain what be the real and precise terms of each sequence. It is for this purpose that experiments are so varied -for in that assemblage of contemporaneous things amid which a given result takes place, it is often not known at the first which of the things is the strict and proper antecedent—and it is to determine this, that sometimes certain of the old circumstances are detached from the groupe and certain new ones added, till the discrimination has been precisely made between what is essential and what is merely accessary in the process.

3. This predisposition to count on the uniformity of nature is an original law of the mind, and is not the fruit of our observation of that uniformity. It has been well stated by Dr. Brown that there is no more of logical dependence between the propositions, that a stone has a thousand times fallen to the earth and a stone will always fall to the earth, than there is between the propositions that a stone has once fallen to the earth and a stone will always fall to the earth. "At whatever link of the chain we begin," he says, we must always meet with the same difficulty, the conversion of the past into the future. If it be absurd to make this conversion at one stage of inquiry, it is just as absurd to make it at any other stage; and, as far as our memory extends, there never was a time at which we did not make the instant conversion." The truth is, that experience teaches the past only-not the future. It tells us what has happened before the present moment and to infer

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from this what will happen afterwards, requires the aid of a distinct principle-the instinctive principle of belief, in short, whose reality we are now contending for.

4. The constancy of nature and man's faith in that constancy do not stand related to each other like the terms of a logical proposition, or in the way of cause and consequence. There is a most beneficent harmony between the material and the mental law-but it is altogether a contingent harmony; and the adaptation of the one to the other is perhaps the most precious evidence within the compass of our own unborrowed light, for a presiding intelligence in the formation or arrangements of the universe. The argument unfolded by Dr. Paley with such marvellous felicity and power, is founded chiefly on the fitnesses that meet together in man's coporeal economy, and on the adjustments of its parts to external nature. It is true that our mental economy offers nothing so complex or so palpable on which to raise a similar argument; and yet can we instance a more wonderful adjustment, or one more prolific of good to our species, than that which obtains between the unexcepted uniformity of nature's processes, and the prior independent disposition which resides in the heart of man to count upon that uniformity, and to proceed on the unfaltering faith of it? Were it not for this, man should for ever remain a lost and bewildered creature among the appearances around him and no experience of his could in the least help to unravel the confusion. The regularity of nature up to the present moment would be of no

avail, without his faith in the continuance of that regularity and it is only by the force of this instinctive anticipation, that the memorials of the past serve him as indices by which to guide his way through the futurity that lies before him. The striking accordancy is, that there should be such an expectation deposited in every bosom; and that from every department of the accessible creation there should be to this expectation the response or the echo of one wide and unexcepted fulfilment. It is like a whisper to the heart of man of a universal promise, which can only be executed by a hand of universal agency-and as if the same Being who infused the hope by an energy within, did, by a diffusive energy abroad, cause the response of an unfailing accomplishment to arise from all the amplitudes of creation and providence. This intuitive faith is not the acquisition of experience; but is given as if by the touch of inspiration for the purpose of stamping on experience all its value_ not gathered by man from his observation of outward nature; but forming an original part of his own nature, and yet in such glorious harmony with all that is around him throughout the innumerable host of nature's sequences, that he never once by trusting in her constancy is disappointed or deceived. Such is the steadfastness of her manifold processes that nature never misgives from her constancy. Such is the strength of his mental instinct that man never misgives from his confidence. Had it not been for the union of these two man had been incapable of wisdom.

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establishment of both bespeaks at once the wisdom and the faithfulness of a God.

5. But this harmony between the intellectual constitution of man and the general constitution of nature, is not only of use in a theological argument it might also be applied to strengthen the foundations of our Philosophy. It forms a demonstration of the perfect safety wherewith we might confide in our ultimate or original principles of belief. We have experimental evidence of this in our anticipation of nature's constancy being so fully realized. This anticipation is not the fruit of experience, but is verified by experience. It is an instinct of the understanding; and that it should have been so met and responded to over the whole domain of creation is like the testimony of a concurrent voice from all things inanimate to the Creator's faithfulness. Seeing that one of the instinctive tendencies of the mind has been so palpably accredited from without-we may commit ourselves, as if to an infallible guidance, in following its other instinctive tendencies. There is a scepticism that is suspicious, as if they were so many false lights, of our original and universal principles whether in judgment or taste or morals—and which looks upon them at best as but the results of an arbitrary organization. From the instance now before us it is plain that the arbiter of our constitution, the artificer of the mechanism of our spirits, has at least most strikingly adapted it to the constitution and the mechanism of external things-the hope or belief of constancy in the one meeting in the other

with the most rigid and invariable fulfilment. This is the strongest practical vindication which can be imagined, of the unshaken faith that we might place in the instinctive and primary suggestions of nature. It restores that feeling of security to our intellectual processes which the Philosophy of Hume so laboured to unsettle: And we again feel a comfort and a confidence in the exercises of reason-when thus reassured in the solidity of those axioms which are reason's stepping-stones, in the substantive truth and certainty of those first principles whence all argumentation takes its rise.

6. But the mention of David Hume leads to the consideration of that atheistical argument which has been associated with his name-an argument not founded however on any denial of the regularity of nature's sequences but proceeding on the admission of that regularity; and only assuming the necessity of experience to ascertain what the sequences actually are. Mr. Hume's argument is this: After having once observed the conjunction between any two terms of an invariable sequence— it is granted that from the observed existence of either of the terms, we can conclude without observation the existence of the other that from a perceived antecedent we can foretell its consequent, although we should not see it; or on the other hand from the perceived consequent we can infer the antecedent, although it should not have been seen by us. Having had the observation once of the two terms A and B, and of the causal relation between them, the appearance of A singly would warrant the anticipation of B, or of B singly the inference of A.