But we cannot admit an a priori necessity for this order. It rests on a postulate, which man can never verify in this world, namely, the non-existence of finite spirits prior to the last epoch of creation. To us, we confess, it seems more probable, that, though there may have been unnumbered ages during which this world had not a rational inhabitant, there were all the while realms of spiritual existence in which the entire circle of the divine attributes was fully manifested. We can find nothing intrinsically incredible in the common belief, that at the end of six natural days from the creation of brute matter, man walked in Eden. We should maintain this, did not geology constrain us to admit that the earth passed through many successive eras prior to the existence of man. Our objection to Chateaubriand's strange theory, that the earth was created old, and that the fossils in its lower strata are not the remains of plants or animals that ever lived, but marks of age imbedded in the solid rock by the Supreme Artificer, is, not that it interferes with any necessary order of manifestation, but that it is a virtual impeachment of the divine veracity, and a summary denial of the validity of all scientific reasoning. Nor can we believe that our author would have ever imagined the order which he presents to have been necessary, had he not been previously convinced of it as a fact resting on adequate inductive evidence. Creation must indeed have had a beginning, and God alone existed from eternity. But we are lost in our attempt to imagine the dread solitude of "Him who is from everlasting," and the moment when his creative fiat was launched into the infinite void. But so far as we can with reverence conceive of that plastic energy in its primeval goings forth, we can think only of the whole God as outrayed and mirrored in the earliest forms of being.

We find it hard, also, to sympathize with our author in his dogmatic and positive statement of the ultimate purpose of creation, namely, "the manifestation of the divine all-sufficiency." This is anthropomorphism again. Selfish display is too often the law and end of man's creations. It is a purpose, which has written its history in blood. It has inspired the usurper, armed the conqueror, steeled the heart of the spoiler. It has chained myriads of slaves, to square the stones of the pyramids. It has hewn tombs in the solid rock, and

reared palaces and temples in the desert. It has left its monuments in godless literature, in poetry which fiends might chant on their gala-days. It is only when a higher aim has been conceived, when a holier purpose has nerved the arm, attuned the tongue, inspired the pen, that man has wrought works, performed deeds, left monuments, in which posterity can rejoice. Love, philanthropy, alone, has been the motive power of those whose names have won a dear and enduring place in the heart of humanity. But we would not substitute our own anthropomorphism for our author's. We presume not with our unconsecrated hands to lift the veil from the eternal purpose of the Almighty. It has been lifted for us by those to whom God has spoken. And if there be a truth of revelation, prominent before all others, pervading the record alike of prophet, evangelist, and apostle, it is that the ultimate purpose of creation was the exercise of the divine benevolence. The theory of infinite selfishness, which our author's language literally implies, keeps its place among written dogmas in the metaphysics of theology, mainly because nobody believes it, and it therefore has not been made a subject of controversy.

We have said these things, not in depreciation of Dr. Harris's book; for allowing that such books need to be written, we should hardly expect to find less to censure than in these. But we do not believe that this is the way to study or to write natural theology. We prefer such geocentric views of the spiritual universe as we can take with accuracy, to heliocentric statements, in which imagination, inadequate conception, and fallible calculation must needs assume the place of observation. Paley's method has not yet been improved upon. The books before us comprehend a precious mass of materials for a treatise in that method, and, if so arranged, their details would present a rich series of proofs and illustrations of the divine attributes. In their present form, they are used to little purpose, and are chiefly valuable as independent facts and reasonings in physical science, rather than as the basis of a theological argument.

But while we doubt the utility of these treatises, we assign to the fundamental truths of natural and revealed religion an essential office in scientific reasoning. They are of service, however, rather in teaching us how to ask, than how to answer, questions. They show us in what direction the truth lies.

They furnish us with tests by which we may discriminate between the probable and the untenable, and may thus, even when in doubt or error, be redeemed from absurdity. They define limits within which correct theories must needs be found, conditions which a hypothesis must satisfy in order to proffer valid claims upon our acceptance. By these means, the labor of inquiry is greatly abridged, and the progress of discovery greatly expedited. The routes of scientific research are not parallel, but cross and recross each other at frequent intervals; and there are three separate lines of investigation, at whose common points of intersection are found the fundamental truths of the physical universe.

On one of these routes the finger-post of design points the way. With inadequate views of the divine attributes, we should rest satisfied with the salient facts and prima facie aspects of nature, and should readily admit the existence of purposeless and objectless forms and arrangements. The obliquity of the ecliptic would have been observed without being accounted for. Animals and plants would have been entered by name in the growing Fauna or Flora of the naturalist, without any attempt to assign them their place or office in the economy of creation. Human anatomy or physiology might have been complete in its details, and yet, as to its rationale, have remained in primeval rudeness. But the same mental process, which recognizes the wisdom of the Creator, dictates the axiom that nothing is made in vain, that all things exist for their several offices and subserve their respective ends. Science then no longer confines itself to the completion of its catalogue of existences and phenomena; but suspends the collection of facts to make entries on the parallel column of purposes and adaptations.

The second route is indicated by the divine benevolence. Under any system but that of Christian theism, science would make only few and casual aggressions upon the domain of apparent evil. Malignant would seem as probable as beneficent ends; and, where the immediate and conspicuous effect was disastrous, the law of design would suggest inquiry simply as to the adaptations and contrivances with reference to that disastrous result. Thus, the volcano, the earthquake, the thunderbolt, would be investigated only as to their resources of destruction, their desolating forces, their potency

as ministers of divine wrath and vengeance. But love strikes a new key-note in the harmonies of science. The Christian philosopher grapples with the seeming fiend, till he can strip off the mask that hides an angel's countenance. The fearful energies of nature are forced into the alembic, and tortured by successive tests, till they betray their benignant secret, and are exalted to their due place among beneficent agencies. The volcano thus becomes a safety-valve, the lightning a swiftwinged minister of health.

The third of these routes has over its gateway the inscription, GOD IS ONE. Polytheistic science contented itself with thinly peopled groups and imperfect classifications. It traced resemblances of the lowest order, but hardly possessed the idea of analogy. Class was deemed distinct from class; the several kingdoms of nature were regarded as mutually independent; and sameness of plan in different departments was not so much as dreamed of. Analogy is but a comprehensive name for the filaments of divine oneness, which form the warp with which the ever-varying woof of creation is interwoven. Every argument from analogy is an enthymeme of which the unity of God is the suppressed member. Analogy indeed proves nothing; but it always points in the direction of the truth, suggests probabilities, solves doubts, affiliates insulated facts, and urges on the discovery of more extended inductions, higher generalizations, laws of simpler expression and wider embrace. It carries into the circuits of the stars the force that detaches the apple from its stem. It traces the commingling of the world-elements in the manipulations of the laboratory. It brings into the same system the elephant and the animalcule, the banyan that shelters an army, and the speck of mould on the crumbling wall. Impatient of differences and numbers, it ever blends, harmonizes, unites; nor can it lay down its ministry till it has inscribed on the entire creation the same clear record of the divine unity that stands on the page of revelation. Design, benevolence, unity, these have become the watchwords of science, the conditions of probability, the germs of theories, the ultimate elements of human knowledge. But potent as these ideas are as the implements of discovery and means of progress, their office is not construction, but verification. They do not tell us what we shall find on inquiry, but only where, and on

what conditions we shall find it. They furnish not the terms of available a priori reasoning; but only enable us to substantiate our inductions of facts, and to pass step-wise, by observation and experiment, from lower to higher orders of truths.

After what we have said, it can hardly be needful that we give a detailed analysis or criticism of the books before us. Perhaps our a priori objections to their form have blinded us to some of their merits. We have admitted for them the highest and most benevolent purposes on the part of the author. We admire the truly devout spirit in which they are written. They are the fruits, if not of a thorough education, at least of extended and judicious reading in the numerous departments of science which they cover. They contain a large amount of accurate and valuable knowledge, and elaborate discussions on not a few mooted points especially in human physiology and mental science. They embody hardly a conclusion from which we would dissent. They are to a surprising degree free from the marks of sectarian theology, and are utterly devoid of the traces of sectarian exclusiveness and rancor. But at best they are dull books, indirect, involved, and awkward in style, repetitious and prosy to an almost inconceivable degree, and entirely unrelieved either by natural eloquence or rhetorical artifice. They will be bought, no doubt, on credit of the author's reputation. They are so arranged that they may be summarily read by titles, as long bills are before Congress. But where they are read through, there must be either a dearth of books, a singularly persistent confidence in a distinguished name, or a reviewer as conscientious as we profess to be.

The proverb, ne sutor supra crepidam, has grown obsolete. It is a heresy of our times, that he who has done one thing well is capable of every thing. The partitions between the different compartments of the field of intellectual labor are thrown down, and the whole ground is turned into common, - the surest way of making it waste land. But if a man has really won fame, or made himself singularly useful as a writer in any one department, the probable inference is, that his endowments and attainments fit him so well for that department, that he must meet with very partial success in any other. The training of such a writer as Dr. Harris