TOM. Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum. I must stick to truth, let what will come of it. I am not bound to answer for consequences. I must own I look upon the argument to be inconclusive.

TIM. All very well; but why could not you say so at first? What occasion to be mealy-mouthed, in an age like this? Now matters are in a train, and we can proceed regularly. What is your objection to the argument? Wherein does it fail?

TOM. It will fail, d'ye see, if there be not an exact similarity in the cases. You will not say that there is an exact similitude between the universe and a house, or between God and man ?

TIM. Why really, Tom, I never imagined the world had a door and a chimney, like a house; or that God had hands and feet, like a man. Nor is it at all necessary that it should be so, for the strength and validity of the argument, which is plainly and simply this-If stones and trees have not thought and design to form themselves into a house, there must have been some one, who had thought and design, to do it for them; and so, as I said before, a fortiori, with respect to the universe, where the thought and design appear infinitely superior to those required in building a house. We have no occasion to suppose a resemblance of the universe to a house, or of God to man, in every particular.

TOм. "But why select so minute, so weak, so bounded a principle, as the reason and design of animals is found to be upon this planet? What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain, which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it upon all occasions; but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion."

TIM. It is not 66 our partiality in our own favour that presents it to us upon all occasions," but the necessity of the case.

There is no other way of speaking upon the subject so as to be understood. Knowledge in God and man, however different in degree, or attained in a different manner, is the same in kind, and produces the same effects, so far as relates to our present purpose. The knowledge of God is intuitive and perfect; that of man is by deduction, and is therefore imperfect, either when his premises are false, or when passion and prejudice enter into his conclusion. But wisdom, which consists in fixing upon proper ends, and fitly proportioning means to those ends, is wisdom, in whatsoever object, mode, or degree it may exist; and there is therefore no illusion in saying, "Every house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is God." You speak of thought, reason, or design as "a little agitation of the brain,” as if you imagined that "Paradise Lost," or the "Advancement of Learning," might at any time be produced by simmering a man's brains over the fire. Certainly an author cannot compose without brains, heart, liver, and lungs; but I am of opinion something more than all four must have gone to the composition even of the "Dialogues concerning Natural Religion." "Minute, weak, and bounded as this principle of reason and design is found to be in the inhabitants of this planet," it can form and frustrate mighty schemes; it can raise and subvert empires; it can invent and bring to perfection a variety of arts and sciences; and in the hands of some very worthy gentlemen of my acquaintance, it can set itself up against all that is called God, and revile the works of the Almighty through 364 pages together.

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TOм. I cannot but still think, there is something of partiality and self-love in the business. 'Suppose there were a planet wholly inhabited by spiders (which is very possible); they would probably assert, with the Brahmins, that the world arose from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels, and annihilates afterwards the whole, or any part of it, by absorbing it again, and resolving it into his

own essence. This inference would there appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence. To us, indeed, it appears ridiculous, because a spider is a little contemptible animal, whose operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole universe."

TIM. Possibly not; but I should take that "little contemptible animal" for an exact model of a sceptical philosopher

"It spins a flimsy web, its slender store,

And labours till it clouds itself all o'er."

And were there a planet wholly inhabited by these same philosophers, I doubt not of their spinning a cosmogony worthy an academy of spiders-and so, Tom, the voluntary humility which discovered itself at your setting out, ends at last in degrading man to a spider; and reason is either exalted to the stars, or depressed to the earth, as best serves the cause of infidelity. In this particular, however, you are at least as bad as the parsons. But let us proceed. What have you

more to say against the argument of the house?

TOM. I say, that arguments concerning facts are founded on experience. I have seen one house planned and erected by an architect, and, therefore, I conclude the same with regard to others. But, "will any man tell me, with a serious countenance, that an orderly universe must arise from some thought and art like the human, because we have experience of it? To ascertain this reasoning, it were requisite that we had experience of the origin of worlds."

TIM. Truly I know not how that can well be; for worlds are not made every day. I have heard of the production of none since our own, and man could not see that made, because he himself was made after it; and he could not exist before he was made. The contrary supposition was, indeed, once ventured on by the master of a Dutch puppet-show. Whether he were a metaphysician, I never heard. In the beginning of

this ingenious drama, Mr Punch, posting over the stage in a very large pair of jack-boots, and being asked, whither he was going at so early an hour, replies I am going to be created. His evidence, if you can procure it, is very much at the service of scepticism, and may go near to determine the matter. In the meantime, I shall presume my argument to be still good, that if a house must be built by thought and design, a world cannot have been built without; though I have seen the one, and never was so fortunate as to see the other. Let me add further, that if in the general contrivance and construction of the world there be evident demonstration of consummate wisdom, that demonstration cannot be set aside by seeming or real inconveniences in some parts, which, for good reasons, were either originally designed, or may have been since introduced, for the trial or punishment of its inhabitants, or for other purposes, unknown to us. This is the plain conclusion formed by common sense, and surely ten times more rational than to talk of eggs, and seeds, and spiders, and the necessity of seeing the world made, in order to know that it had a maker.

SOAME JENYNS.

From many of the best arguments, it is impossible to detach characteristic extracts. A work like Gilbert West on "The Resurrection of Christ," Lord Lyttelton's "Conversion of St Paul," or "The Trial of the Witnesses," needs to be read continuously; and in the bulky tomes of Lardner and Leland we can find no specimen sufficiently minute for our little cabinet. We, therefore, conclude our examples with a few pages from the work of a layman who, like West and Lyttelton, was all the firmer in his faith, because the doubts of early years had constrained him to examine its foundations carefully.

SOAME JENYNS was born at Great Ormond Street, London,

in 1704; and died in Tilney Street, December 13, 1787. During most of his life he represented in Parliament the town or the county of Cambridge. His "View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion" is somewhat impaired for practical purposes, by its paradoxical assertion that valour, patriotism, and friendship, are not Christian virtues; but passages like the following contain the germ of an argument which is capable of indefinite development, and the force of which can never be exhausted or impaired.

The Originality and Pre-eminence of Christ and
Christianity.

My second proposition is this-that from this book may be extracted a system of religion entirely new, both with regard to the object and the doctrines, not only infinitely superior to, but totally unlike everything which had ever before entered into the mind of man. I say extracted, because all the doctrines of this religion having been delivered at various times, and on various occasions, and here only historically recorded, no uniform or regular system of theology is here to be found; and better perhaps it had been, if less labour had been employed by the learned to bend and twist these divine materials into the polished forms of human systems, to which they never will submit, and for which they were never intended by their Great Author. Why He chose not to leave any such behind Him we know not, but it might possibly be because He knew that the imperfection of man was incapable of receiving such a system, and that we are more properly and more safely conducted by the distant and scattered rays than by the too powerful sunshine of divine illumination. "If I have told you earthly things," says He, "and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" that is, If My instructions concerning your behaviour in the present as relative