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the scale of creation, to the circumstances in which they are placed; so many contrivances, exhibiting the deepest intellect, taking the most comprehensive surveys of every possible contingency, and rearing a structure calculated to stand against every pressure upon it, we must feel convinced that the attention of the Creator is directed to every individual in existence, whether great or small, high or low, spiritual or material. To every thing that he created he gave a law, the law of its nature; a law emanating from Him, enforced by the physical powers acting upon certain structures, and producing certain necessary effects under His constant superintendence, direction, and action, on and by those powers.

The intestinal worms, as well as some other parasitic animals, are many of them so remarkable for the situation in which we discover them, that their transport to the spot where they are to exercise their function seems almost miraculous. How a mite should find its way into the human brain seems past our conjecture. We cannot clearly ascertain by what means the eye-worms are conducted to their assigned station, nor how the various species of tape-worm invariably select each its proper pabulum: the same holds good with regard to the cyst-worms,1 or hyda

1 Cysticercus.

tids. Do they, like the Infernal Fury," as fabled by Linné, fall from heaven upon the earth and waters, and instantly bury themselves in their allotted animals? But to speak soberly, all we can safely affirm is, that He who decreed the end decrees the means, and these probably are physical ones under his direction. He it is who guides the punitive animals that he employs to their several stations. Is there not an omnipresent Deity, whose action is incessant, and coextensive with his presence? He it is that, as the Prophet speaks, causeth it to rain upon one city, and not to rain upon another city; that employs his instruments, both of benediction and punishment, according to his will. It is He, who by secret paths, and by means that mock our researches, conducts to their assigned station the animals in question. Every power of nature, every physical agent, is at His disposal. His is the earthquake and the volcano; the lightning of the thunder; the fire-damp of the mine; the overwhelming violence of the water flood; the windy storm and tempest: His is the wide-wasting sword, that destroys myriads, and the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and carries off millions; and He gives his commission to all his scourges against individuals as well as against nations, which they un

1 Furia infernalis.-L..

consciously execute and cannot exceed, for He saith to them, as to the raging sea, Hitherto shall ye come and no further, and here shall the work of destruction cease.

We have a remarkable instance of this special guidance and employment of natural objects in the case of the prophet Jonah, when he disobeyed the word of the Lord. In the first place God sent out a great wind into the sea; in the next he prepared a great fish to swallow him alive when he should be cast overboard, and at the Lord's command the same animal cast him upon the dry land. Next God prepared a gourd for a shadow against the heat; after that he prepared a worm which destroyed the gourd; and in the last place he prepared a silent east wind,1 or a heat, like the sirocco, without sound. In all these cases the object employed was a physical object, under the immediate direction of the Deity. The wind, the fish, the gourd, the worm, the heat, were not new creations, but well known objects, acted upon to take a particular direction so as to produce particular events.

By what is here said, I by no means assert the doctrine of inevitable fate, for then there would be no use in the employment of means of prevention. Sir H. Davy's safety-lamp would not preserve the life of the miner, nor Dr. Frank

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lin's conductor disarm the thunder cloud; and all the other means that, non sine Deo, have been invented to render harmless the action of the physical powers under certain circumstances; but I would merely assert that constant superintendence of the Deity over the world that he has created, and Who upholdeth all things by the word of his power, which we call Providence, by which, in general as well as individually, his will has full accomplishment; and every substance or being, whether animate or inanimate, takes the station which he has assigned to it. This is no miraculous interference out of the general course of nature, but the adaptation of that course to answer the wise purposes of Providence, which selects individuals, and distinguishes them from other individuals by events, as to this world, seemingly prosperous or adverse, but which have their ultimate reference to the spiritual world, and to their final destiny. As God willeth not that any should perish, so he withholdeth not from any the means, that, if duly used and improved, will be sufficient for his salvation; and in all his dealings with mankind he hath this great and merciful object in view.

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