an infinity of worlds, some of which are at every point of time produced, as others perish? But if this accidental concourse of atoms can make a world, ' why does it never form a portico, an house, a temple, a city, which might certainly be effected with much greater ease?"*

Let us for a few moments select a part of the creation of God as a full answer to the absurd system under consideration, and as an indisputable evidence of infinite skill and of omnipotent agency. We are about to turn your reflections upon yourselves. Contemplate your own body: observe the union of its several parts, and their adaptation to the particular purposes for which they were designed. Mark the composition and configuration of the whole. What grace in movements! what beauty of countenance! what endless diversity of feature! what incomparable workmanship is perceptible in the whole frame! You discover bones,marvellously united, presenting a skeleton of the human form: fibres and nerves, fine and delicate in the extreme: muscles, possessing incredible strength, and singularly disposed: vessels, through which the stream of life flows, complicated, and branched into every part of the body: a spirit, at an unknown moment, and in an unsearchale manner, superadded to give impulse to the whole machine. In consequence of every volition of the mind, this and the other muscle is in motion: but no one can define the union between matter and spirit: and philosophy in vain attempts to lay her finger upon the spring which agitates the vibrations of ten thousand invisible fibres. The whole mass of blood is perpetually circulating through every channel, and return

Cic. de nat. de or. ii, 37.

ing to the heart black and improper for the purposes of life, till it has undergone an instantaneous chemical change, which is effected in the lungs by the air, and it flows on purified to pursue its unwearied course. If the air inhaled be unsuitable to perform this process, and unable to effect this change, immediate death is the inevitable consequence. Air, which has lost its elasticity in mines and similar places, or which is impregnated with mortal particles, has this sudden and awful influence upon the human frame. Who, with the smallest pretensions to reason, can affirm or believe that such complex machinery is the production of chance? Galen, a celebrated heathen, was converted from atheism by contemplating an human skeleton, persuaded that workmanship so exquisite, and design so manifest, demonstrated the existence of a Creator. Yet is this human frame but a very small part of the divine agency. The same skill is visible in every, the meanest, insect, submitted to our inspection.

The Egyptians maintained the irrational system under consideration; and one should imagine that a more complete refutation could not be made, than their own statement of it. Diodorus Siculus has preserved it, and we submit it to your examination.

"At the commencement of all things, the elements of the heavens and the earth were blended, and they wore an uniform appearance. But afterwards these parts separated from each other, the world assumed the shape which we now behold, and the air received its perpetual motion. The fire ascended highest, because the lightness of its nature impelled it upwards; and for the same reason the sun and the stars move in an invariable circle. But that part which was gross and muddy, as also the fluid, sank down into one

place, by the force of gravity. These elements perpetually floating and rolling together, from their moisture produced the sea, while from their more solid particles sprang the earth, as yet extremely soft and miry. But in proportion as the light of the sun began to shine upon it, it became solid; and the surface of it fermented by the warmth extracting its moisture, swelled, and exuded putrescences, covered over with a kind of thin skins, such as may still be observed in marshy or boggy places, when, the earth having been cool, the air is heated suddenly, and not by a gradual change. These putrescences, formed after this manner from the moisture of the earth extracted by the warmth, by night were nourished from the clouds spread all around, and in the day were consolidated by the heat. At length when these embryos were arrived at their perfect growth, and the membranes by which they were enclosed were broken by the warmth, all sorts of living creatures instantly appeared. Those that had a larger proportion of heat in their natures, became birds and soared on high. Those that were of a gross and terrestrial kind, became reptiles and animals confined to the ground. While those who drew the most of their qualities from moisture, were gathered into an element corresponding with their natures, and became fish."*

It is scarcely possible to conceive of any thing more confused, inexplicable, and unphilosophical, than this hypothesis. Yet even in this account, deformed as it is by alterations, disguised by absurdity, and clouded with obscurity, something of the Mosaic system may be traced, which renders it probable that it might orig

* Diod. Sic. Lib. I.

inally have sprang from his representation of chaos. There is this essential difference: he makes order and beauty to arise out of confusion and deformity under the forming, superintending hand of Deity: they ascribe it all to the agency of chance. When I speak

of the Mosaic hypothesis, I would be understood to prefix his name to the scriptural system, only because he committed to writing the tradition of the generations which preceded him up to the birth of time, and not to insinuate that he was the inventor of the ac count contained in the first chapter of Genesis.

On the present occasion, and in the discussion of the present subject, I trust that it will be deemed sufficient if I merely mention a more modern hypothesis. It remained for the philosophers of the eighteenth century to discover that the earth and the other planets were originally parts of the sun, struck off from that immense body by the concussion of comets, and whirled into infinite space, by the rapidity of their motion acquiring their spherical form, and assuming their present appearance. It may be thought that this account of the creation evinces the fertility of their imaginations; but it may also be questioned whether it will place the laurel upon their heads, as accurate reasoners, or as illumined and sound philosophers. Yet these are the men who arrogate to themselves the sole claim to reason, and who condemn as superstitious and irrational, all who, rejecting their crude and extravagant systems, adhere to the plain, concise, and luminous account, transmitted to us by Moses.

But it is time that we should pass on to the consideration of the remaining hypothesis, viz.

II. THAT THE WORLD IS ETERNAL.

Many celebrated names among the ancients supported this opinion; of whom were Ocellus, Lucanus, Aristotle, the later Platonists, and Xenophanes, the founder of a sect called the Eleatic. Plato himself acknowledged that the world was created by the hand of God. It was more over supported by many modern philosophers; among whom we may number, Spinoza, Amalric, and Abelard; not to name those of our own day, some of whom hold the eternity of the world in its full sense; and. others assign to it an antiquity much more remote than the scriptural account will allow. The heathen poets at large countenanced the former opinion, which proves that the popular sentiment of the Pagan world was, that what we deem creation, sprang from a chaos of which they appear to have no correct notion, under the influence of mere chance.*

There are several modifications of the hypothesis of the world's eternity: but we feel it our duty to assign the reasons which appear to us to overthrow it rather than to state the several senses in which it was held.

1. A valuable writer† has laid it down as an axiom, that if any thing be eternal it is also self-existent and immutable. For a being is the same with all its properties taken together. We can have "no conception of any substance distinct from all the properties in which they inhere." On this principle, if any property be removed or destroyed, a part of that being would necessarily perish; which is inconsistent with its being

See note 2, at the end of the volume.

† Doddridge's Lectures, xxiv, Part II, page 47. Demonstrationconnected with the preceding chain of propositions.