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call for moral trust, and hope, and security in the continued paternal support of "the everlasting arms"? And I think there can be no doubt, that the perfect fixedness and firmness of our belief, in reality rests upon this most reasonable expectation, and moral confidence and security. But alas! when belief becomes, as it must do for the common purposes of life, a mere habit of thinking, without our looking back to its grounds-the firmer and more settled it is, the more it seems to rest in itself, and to have no deeper foundation so that this acute thinker has only fallen in philosophy into the same error into which all men are apt to fall in daily observations of more immediate influence on their religious impressions. To a man of sound religious views, the continuance of the course of nature from the first records of history to the present day, is surely a great confirmation of the consistency and immutability of the Divine ordinances-but to profane men, and to all men, more or less, in the usual unreflecting manner in which their views are formed, this unvarying order seems to remove purpose and volition from the helm of nature, and to place it under the hand of unthinking necessity. The prejudice is increased from our feeling that our own plans and purposes are constantly interrupted by capricious movements-and a perpetual tissue of miracles would be going forward in nature were it conducted by beings like ourselves. Whenever then a plan of perfect and fixed consistency is placed before our eyes-we are apt-from the distinction between its aspect, and our own changeable devices-to look upon it as no plan at all-and what is in fact the strongest confirmation of a Deity, we convert into the foundation of atheism. This is exactly the ground of that reasoning, which, as St. Peter tells us, was to be used by the scoffers who should come in the last days, and say—“Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." I have always regretted that the ingenious philosopher alluded to should have been tempted to join that unholy band, and to have carried into the precincts of religion those principles of reasoning, which, though imperfect in his philosophy, yet throw only a veil over much valuable truth, that may easily be brought out from its covering. His far-famed argument against miracles, is deduced notwithstanding from his principles, though from the erroneous, not the true aspect of them. The customary, or habitual belief of which he speaks, follows hard upon every instance of the rational and well-grounded sort, so as to seem to smother it, and convert it into itself—but it is only when we regard it as the original, not the accessory principle, that the conclusion

against Revelation, drawn from it, by this reasoner, has any hold upon the understanding. Had we no ground of belief for the continuance of the course of nature but custom-or a mere habitual belief resting at first on the vividness conferred by a present impression, or a supposed future event connected with it, and afterwards rivetted from the constant repetition of the conjunction-were this the whole-shadowy and unsubstantial as such belief would be it would yet be impregnable, for there would be no other powerful enough to counterbalance it. The belief in testimony would not-for the faith which we are accustomed to place in human testimony never rests on so strong a habit of belief as that which we repose on the invariableness of natural laws.-But remove the mere customary belief from its supremacy- and take the sound rational belief for the foundation-and it amounts to this, that we have certainly strong grounds for the expectation that the laws of nature will not be lightly departed from, and we have a moral assurance from the wisdom and benevolence displayed in them, and from the dependence of our own well-being upon them, sufficient to rest our trust and confidence in their continuance - but the ground of this reliance never amounts to a declaration that they will in no instance be suspended-whereas the accounts given us of miracles amount to a positive declaration that such suspensions have taken place. The declaration in the latter instance, to be sure, is only that of man, and requires to be well sifted and weighed before it is given credit to for although there is no positive declaration on the part of God, that he will never infringe upon his physical arrangements—yet from their unvarying operation, he certainly gives us reason, the strongest possible, to look for their unbroken continuance, and to regard their suspension, in any instance, as extremely improbable, at first view. A very clear and unsuspicious evidence from testimony would overcome this improbability and, if in addition, we saw great moral probabilities for the suspension taking place the balance might be entirely changed, and the reality of the miracle placed beyond all reasonable doubt. The habitual belief then, which we give either to the continuance of the laws of nature, or to human testimony-ought to be cast entirely out of this question, as doing nothing else but throwing perplexity on the original grounds of belief in both cases which are nothing else than the faith which we necessarily repose in our Creator, and that which we as naturally repose in our fellow-creatures, though with the difference arising from our knowledge of their liability both to deceive and to be deceived. I was unwilling to pass over these slight observations on this argument which has been found so puzzling merely

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from the nature and grounds of belief not being accurately investigated-though they have rather led me out of my route-and before leaving the subject of the course of nature-I have still something to suggest in explanation of some of those difficulties relating to memory and the notion of time which, you may remember, Pamphilus, put us rather to a stand a short while ago. I think, then, we came to this distinction between the ideas of duration and of time, that if we conceived an intellectual being continuing fixed in one single thought or mental operation-he would be conscious of duration but not of time, which seems an idea applicable only to a succession of thoughts, such as can be distinguished into before and after. A succession of thoughts seems to be the description of thinking belonging to a limited or imperfect intellect. I am here, to be sure, speculating in a way which it does not suit a being of that description to venture on but, perhaps it is true, that the most perfect intelligence has all its thoughts so connected together as to be surveyed in one glance so that the succession which constitutes time is not referrible to such perfection of intelligence. When any of the fixed purposes of the Divine Mind are so presented to us, as to seem in undivided operation as when they support the identity of an object, without apparent change or movement, as in the fixed objects of nature with which we are conversant from day to day-we then gain the notion of duration without the division of time, and accordingly, as I said, we are even apt naturally to apply the epithet "eternal" to such objects-our most complete conception of duration, and which in strictness is applicable to the Deity alone. But the succession of our own thoughts, much more commonly leads us to consider duration as divided by time, and this succession is kept up and regulated by the movements of the material world. If some objects appear not only to continue identical in form, but also in place, the greater number are constantly shifting their positions or are soon subject to change and decay. Such objects do not suggest the idea of unvarying duration but of all the variations of time-which, however, it would be of little use to us to remark—were not the most important of these variations, from their orderly and systematic progression, quite as much a matter of arrangement as any one object in any single instant before our eyes. In short, the orderly divisions of time, are quite as much a work of divine wisdom, and are felt to be so, as the formation of a tree or an animal which our eyes and understandings take in distinctly at once, and the regular movements of the heavenly bodies, by which, times and season, days and years, are measured-are quite as clearly a divine ordinance, as

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the creation of these luminaries themselves. We may thus see how beautifully the order of the world is accommodated to the capacities of the creatures which are introduced into it. To a being like man, whose very imperfect, and finite thoughts and conceptions, instead of being united in one grand and comprehensive whole, are necessarily broken into that succession which suggests the idea of the divisions of time-these divisions-which are referrible to the imperfection and short-sightedness, if I may so speak, of his intellect-are bountifully made the means of its clearness and steadiness, so far as it goes, consequence of the manner in which the grand movements of nature are applied to the orderly arrangement of these divisions. Were it not for the order and system applied to the course of human thoughts by the daily and hourly processes of nature, by which their succession is made to correspond with the succession of natural occurences the human mind would be a mere scene of chaos and confusion-as is exemplified in dreams or madness, when thoughts run wild without being under any restraint or regulation. The unvarying aspect of many of the objects on the surface of the earth, if this were the universal appearance of things, if there were no change, no movement, would be but ill accomodated to supply the wants of a mind which is itself ever in motion, and requires a change of objects to interest it. Were there again no order observed in the succession of natural changes, the erratic tendency of the soul would be too much encouraged, and not kept within due bounds. As it is, nature presents a constant variety in its movements and appearances yet there is a wonderful order, at the same time, maintained, so as to be exactly adapted to employ, and at the same time to regulate, the internal shiftings of the human mind. I formerly pointed out the assistance given to memory by the perpetual repetition of the same objects so as that we become quite familiar with them, and can thus easily distinguish them, when they pass through our minds, from the wandering ideas of imagination. The face of my friend, or the scenery of the place in which I have always lived, have become so fixed in my conception, in the very attitude of thought, so to speak, in which my mind has been placed when they were actually in my presence that I can, at once, speak of them as things remembered, not merely pictured to the fancy. Most things which are remembered present themselves in this aspect, but length of time either entirely erases it, occasionally, from such recollections as have been seldom repeated-or it may leave an uncertainty as to their really being recollections. Imagination may add so much of its own also, to

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such recollections, that they may almost seem to have been absorbed in it,—

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Is the philosophical expression of a poet and refers to a very common employment of the fancy, by which it converts partial recollections almost into its own creatures. Now, it is of great efficacy for the restoration of such recollections, or for preventing their being effaced -to fix them to any of the marked successions of time. If it occurs to us, that the thing which we faintly remember happened upon such a day, its colours will immediately be refreshed, and many other connected events or objects will start up in the mind, each enlivening and corroborating the other. It is within these enclosures of time, as we may denominate days and years, that the fugitive events of the world, which would soon escape from notice, are stopped in their flight, and confined. We should forget many more events in our lives than we do certainly we should remember them in a much more desultory and less orderly manner had we not the divisions of time by which to arrange them -and it is very evident, that the history of the ages before us would be a mere mass of confusion, were not, however imperfectly it may be, this arrangement of chronology preserved.

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What is the grand impression left upon the mind by the observation of the regular course of nature? It has less a reference to the sublime identity of the Divine workmanship, than to the skill and wisdom exhibited in order and succession. This impression derived from every observation of the diurnal and annual course of the heavens, must enter largely, though it may be insensibly, into all our feeling of their grandeur and beauty. These great and lovely appearances of nature may be less surprising, but they are felt as much more affecting, from the constancy of their recurrence, when we are in a frame of mind that is not deadened and palsied by that circumstance. The glories of the sunrise, or the sunset, may be often unobserved, or unfelt from their frequency-but when they do impress us with their splendours, they are more overpowering, and awaken a deeper sense of beauty, from the knowledge, that they are the exhibitions in some shape or other of every day, though they may vary, and indeed do, every day, in some of their traits and expressions, and may be more attractive on one occasion than on another. It is this wonderful variety, this ex

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