ON NATURAL THEOLOGY. BY THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. & LL.D. PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. VOL. II. GLASGOW: WILLIAM COLLINS, INGRAM STREET; HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO. LONDON. CONTENTS. BOOK IV. EVIDENCES FOR A GOD IN THE ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO THE MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. CHAPTER J. On the General Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral Constitution of Man. 1. IT needs but a cursory observation of life to be made sensible, that man has not been endowed with a conscience, without, at the same time, being placed in a theatre which afforded the most abundant scope and occasion for its exercise. The truth is, that, in the multitude of fellow-beings by whom he is surrounded, and in the manifold variety of his social and family relations, there is a perpetual call on his sense of right and wrong— insomuch, that to the doings of every hour throughout his waking existence, one or other of these moral designations is applicable. It might have been stigmatized as the example of a mal-adjustment in the circumstances of our species, had man been provided with a waste feeling or a waste faculty, which remained dormant and unemployed from the want of counterpart objects that were suited to it. The wisdom of God admits of glorious vindication |