take a view of the universe, in its parts, general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.  The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces; the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters, and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses; it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there is in all this, design, cause, and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms.  We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power, to maintain the universe in its course and order.  Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view; comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets, and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos.  So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful agent, that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed through all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent universe.  Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable, than that of the few in the other hypothesis.  Some early Christians, indeed, have believed in the co-eternal pre-existence of both the creator and the world, without changing their relation of cause and effect.  That this was the opinion of St. Thomas, we are informed by Cardinal Toleta, in these words; ’Deus ab terno fuit jam omnipotens, si cut cum produxit mundum.  Ah aternopotuit producers mundum.  Si sol ah czterno esset, lumen ah aeterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium.  At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficients solis et pedis; potuit ergo cum causa aeterna effectus coaternus esse.  Cujus sententia, est S. Thomas, theologorum primus.’—­Cardinal Toleta.

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[Illustration:  page365]

Of the nature of this being we know nothing.  Jesus tells us, that ’God is a spirit’(John iv. 24.), but without defining what a spirit is:  [Greek phrase] Down to the third century, we know that it was still deemed material but of a lighter, subtler matter than our gross bodies.  So says Origen; Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem, reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus.’  These are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen.  Origen himself says, [Greek and Latin phrase]