ted to generate that frame of mind, and to inculcate those lessons of
truth, which are appropriate to the condition of man, as a subject of
moral discipline in a state of probation and trial. Nothing short of
this will suffice for the explanation of the Divine government, or for
the satisfaction of the human mind. It is felt to be a mere insult to
the understandings, and a bitter mockery to the feelings, of men, to
talk only of "natural laws," or even of their "independent action" in
such a case, to tell a weeping mother that her child died, and died too
as the transgressor of a wise and salutary "natural law" which
establishes a certain relation between opium and the nervous system:
for, grant that the law is wise and salutary, grant that evil would
result from its abolition, grant even that it acts independently of any
other law, physical or moral, still the profounder question remains,
whether such an event as the death of a tender child, through the
operation of a law of which that child was necessarily ignorant, can
properly be regarded as a punishment inflicted by Divine justice? and
whether a theory of this kind can afford "a key to the government of
God?"

Such are some of the radical and incurable defects of Mr. Combe's theory
of "natural laws." We ascribe it to him simply because he has been the
most recent and the most popular expounder of it. But it is not
original, nor in any sense peculiar to him alone. He acknowledges his
obligations in this respect to a manuscript work of Dr. Spurzheim,
entitled, "A Sketch of the Natural Laws of Man;" and he refers, somewhat
incidentally, to Volney's "Law of Nature," published originally as a
Catechism, and afterwards reprinted under the title, "La Loi Naturelle;
_ou, Principes Physiques de la Morale_." The same theory, in substance,
had been broached in the "Systeme de la Nature," and _there_ it was
applied in support of the atheistic conclusions of that remarkable
treatise. But it may be said to have been _methodized_ by Volney; and in
his treatise it is exhibited in a form adapted to popular
instruction.[203] There is a striking resemblance between his
speculations and those of Mr. Combe. He, too, acknowledges the existence
of God; but virtually supersedes His Providence by the substitution of
"natural laws." The "law of Nature" is defined as "the constant order by
which _God_ governs the world," and is represented as the most universal
"rule of action." That law is s