n
a particular aspect, such a Professor as I have imagined was betraying a
want of philosophical depth, and an ignorance of what an University
Teaching ought to be. He was no longer a teacher of liberal knowledge, but
a narrow-minded bigot. While his doctrines professed to be conclusions
formed upon an hypothesis or partial truth, they were undeniable; not so
if they professed to give results in facts which he could grasp and take
possession of. Granting, indeed, that a man's arm is moved by a simple
physical cause, then of course we may dispute about the various external
influences which, when it changes its position, sway it to and fro, like a
scarecrow in a garden; but to assert that the motive cause _is_ physical,
this is an assumption in a case, when our question is about a matter of
fact, not about the logical consequences of an assumed premiss. And, in
like manner, if a people prays, and the wind changes, the rain ceases, the
sun shines, and the harvest is safely housed, when no one expected it, our
Professor may, if he will, consult the barometer, discourse about the
atmosphere, and throw what has happened into an equation, ingenious, even
though it be not true; but, should he proceed to rest the phenomenon, in
matter of fact, simply upon a physical cause, to the exclusion of a
divine, and to say that the given case actually belongs to his science
because other like cases do, I must tell him, _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_:
he is making his particular craft usurp and occupy the universe. This then
is the drift of my illustration. If the creature is ever setting in motion
an endless series of physical causes and effects, much more is the
Creator; and as our excluding volition from our range of ideas is a denial
of the soul, so our ignoring Divine Agency is a virtual denial of God.
Moreover, supposing man can will and act of himself in spite of physics,
to shut up this great truth, though one, is to put our whole encyclopaedia
of knowledge out of joint; and supposing God can will and act of Himself
in this world which He has made, and we deny or slur it over, then we are
throwing the circle of universal science into a like, or a far worse
confusion.

Worse incomparably, for the idea of God, if there be a God, is infinitely
higher than the idea of man, if there be man. If to plot out man's agency
is to deface the book of knowledge, on the supposition of that agency
existing, what must it be, supposing it exists, to blot