In order to avoid mistake, we must make a distinction between the principles of science, and the application of those principles to the useful arts of life. The principles themselves are an illustration of the divine wisdom and benevolence, but their application to the arts illustrates the ingenuity and wisdom of man. At the most, therefore, the latter only indirectly and remotely exhibits the character of the Deity, while the former directly shows forth his perfections.
I now proceed to establish my general proposition, by showing, in the first place, that all scientific truth is adapted to prove the existence or to illustrate the perfections of the Deity.
After all that has been written on the subject of natural theology, by such men as Newintyt, Ray, Derham, Wollaston, Clarke, Butler, Tucker, Paley, Chalmers, Crombie, Brown, Brougham, Harris, M’Cosh, and the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises, I need not surely go into details to prove that science in general is a great storehouse of facts to illustrate the divine perfections and government. It is, indeed, a vast repository, from which materials have been drawn on which to build the argument for the divine existence and character. Efforts have been made, it is true, in modern times, to show that the whole argument from design is inconclusive. It is said, that though the operations of nature seem to show design and contrivance, they need no higher powers than those that exist in nature itself. They do not prove the existence of an independent personal agent, separate from the material world. Animals, and even plants, possess an inherent power of adapting themselves to circumstances; and may not a higher exercise of this same power explain all the operations of nature without any other Deity?
This argument appears to me to be utterly set aside by the following considerations: In the first place, there is no power inherent in vegetable or animal natures which can properly be called the power of contrivance and design, except so far as it exists in their minds. All other examples show merely the operation of impulse, or instinct, and will not at all explain that wide-reaching contrivance and design which cause all the operations of nature to conspire to certain great results, and to constitute one, and only one, great system. In the second place, the operations of intellect furnish us with the only examples in nature of that kind of contrivance and design which must have arranged and adapted the parts of the universe. But in the third place, no intellect, within our knowledge, is capacious enough to have contrived and arranged the universe. Indeed, to the capacity of that mind which could have done this we can assign no limits, and, therefore, infer it to be infinite. In other words, we infer the existence of the Deity. In the fourth place, the whole force of this argument rests upon the supposed uniformity of nature. For no one imagines that there exists at present, in nature, any power of contrivance and design sufficient to work a miracle; in other words, to introduce new races of animals and plants. “Could this uniformity once be broken up,” says an ingenious expositor of this atheistic argument, “could this rigid order be once infringed for a good and manifest reason, it would change the whole face of the argument. Could we see the sun stand still in heaven, that the wicked might be overthrown, then should we be assured of a personal power with a distinct will, whose agents and ministers these laws were. Such an event would be a miracle. But if such events have happened, they are not a part of nature; it is not nature that tells us of them, and it is only with her that we are at present concerned.”—President Hopkins, Quarterly Observer, Oct. 1833, p. 309.
Geology, however, does reveal to us miracles of stupendous, import, miracles of creation, which infinite power and wisdom alone could have produced. Hence, if the testimony of that science be admitted, this reasoning can no longer stand the test of examination, and it must be acknowledged that the argument for God’s existence from design, which has ever been so satisfactory to every mind not clouded by metaphysics, is left standing on an immovable foundation.
To return to the point from which we started: it is not necessary, I say, to go into a detailed examination of each particular science, and show how its principles prove and illustrate the being and attributes of the Deity, for the work has already been done more ably and thoroughly than I can do it, and admitted by all, save the few who reject the argument from design altogether. There are a few sciences, however, which have been hitherto chiefly passed by, because they were not supposed capable of throwing any light of consequence upon theology. Let us see whether these sciences are as barren of religious interest as has been supposed.
Geology is a branch of knowledge, which, a few years ago, would have been at once selected as not only destitute of any important religious applications, but as of a positively injurious tendency; and even now, such is the feeling probably of a majority of the religious world. True, it touches religion, natural and revealed, at many points; but so novel and startling are its conclusions, that they are thought to unsettle more minds than they confirm. They fall in with many of the views of scepticism, and especially confirm its doubts concerning the age of the world, and compel the religious man to give up long-cherished opinions upon this point, and on other collateral subjects. But we have gone into a careful examination of the religious applications of this science, and have we not found it most fertile in its illustrations both of natural and revealed religion? Let us just recapitulate the conclusions at which we have arrived.
In the first place, geology furnishes important illustrations of revealed religion. It confirms the statement that the present continents of our globe were once, and for an indefinite time, beneath the ocean, and that they were subsequently lifted above the waters by internal agencies. It agrees with revelation in making water and heat the two great agents of geological change upon and within the earth, and that the work of creation, after the production of matter, was progressive. It shows us equally with revelation, that the existing races of animals and plants on the globe were created at a comparatively recent epoch, and that man commenced his existence not more than six thousand years ago. It shows us, also, that the earth contains within itself the volcanic agency necessary for its future destruction by combustion, as described in the Bible.
But, perhaps, the most important illustration of revealed truth, which geology affords, is the light which it casts upon certain passages of the Bible relating to the creation. As those texts which represent the earth as immovable, and the heavenly bodies as moving diurnally around it, were not rightly understood, until astronomy had discovered the true theory of the solar system, so those passages which relate to the period of the creation of the universe, the introduction of death into the world, and the extent and operation of the deluge, were misinterpreted till geology disclosed their true meaning. It is still customary, indeed, to speak of geology and revelation as in collision with each other on these subjects; but this is a false view of the case. Revelation is illustrated, not opposed, by geology. Who thinks, at this day, of any discrepancy between astronomy and revelation? And yet, two hundred years ago, the evidence of such discrepancy was far more striking than any which can now be offered to show geology at variance with the Scriptures. We ought, therefore, to look upon that science as illustrating, instead of opposing, the Scriptures.
Having once admitted the conclusions of geology as to the great age of the world, and a flood of light is shed upon some of the most difficult points both of natural and revealed religion. It shows the occurrence of numerous changes on the globe which nothing but the power of God could have produced, and which in fact were most striking and stupendous miracles. Hence the arguments which have so long been employed to show that the world is eternal are rendered nugatory; for if we can point to epochs when entire races of animals and plants began to exist on the globe, we prove the agency of a Deity quite as strikingly as if we could show the moment when the matter of the world was summoned into existence out of nothing. In the same manner, also, we silence the argument against the giving of a revelation from heaven, as well as the miracles by which it is substantiated, on the ground that we have no example of a special interference with the established course of nature. Here we have interpositions long anterior to man’s existence, as well as by his creation, which take away all improbability from those which are implied in a revelation. We hence likewise establish the doctrine of a special providence over the world—a doctrine proved with great difficulty by any other reasoning of natural theology.