e month, and see how it would be with all his
undertakings, if it were not day but night. He would then be
sufficiently convinced out of his own experience, especially if he had
much work to carry on in the street or in the fields.... From the sun
we learn to recognize when it is midday, and by knowing this point of
time exactly, we can set our clocks right, on which account astronomy
owes much to the sun.... By help of the sun one can find the
meridian.... But the meridian is the basis of our sun-dials, and
generally speaking, we should have no sun-dials if we had no sun."
Vernunftige Gedanken von den Absichter der naturlichen Dinge, 1782.
pp.74-84.

Or read the account of God's beneficence in the institution of "the
great variety throughout the world of men's faces, voices, and
hand-writing," given in Derham's Physico-theology, a book that had much
vogue in the eighteenth century. "Had Man's body," says Dr. Derham,
"been made according to any of the Atheistical Schemes, or any other
Method than that of the infinite Lord of the World, this wise Variety
would never have been: but Men's Faces would have been cast in the
same, or not a very different Mould, their Organs of Speech would have
sounded the same or not so great a Variety of Notes, and the same
Structure of Muscles and Nerves would have given the Hand the same
Direction in Writing. And in this Case what Confusion, what
Disturbance, what Mischiefs would the world eternally have lain under!
No Security could have been to our persons; no Certainty, no Enjoyment
of our Possessions; no Justice between Man and Man, no Distinction
between Good and Bad, between Friends and Foes, between Father and
Child, Husband and Wife, Male or Female; but all would have been turned
topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Malice of the Envious and
ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knaves and Robbers, to the
Forgeries of the crafty Cheat, to the Lusts of the Effeminate and
Debauched, and what not! Our Courts of Justice can abundantly testify
the dire Effects of Mistaking Men's Faces, of counterfeiting their
Hands, and forging Writings.

But now as the infinitely wise Creator and Ruler hath ordered the
Matter, every man's Face can distinguish him in the Light, and his
Voice in the Dark, his Hand-writing can speak for him though absent,
and be his Witness, and secure his Contracts in future Generations. A
manifest as well as admirable Indication of the divine Superintendenc