NATURAL THEOLOGY (ante), the name applied to the knowledge concerning the existence and attributes of God, furnished by the organized This knowledge springs from the answers to two questions: 1. Is this complicated universe the work of a personal creator, or a result of impersonal force? 2. If of .t personal creator, what does it, as his work, show. concerning his character, attributts, and relations to his creatures? The answers to these questions depend on. the assumptions that every change must be effected by some adequate cause, and that design proves the existence of a designer, whose attributes and character are indicated in his work. The basis for these assumptions is found, by the best thinkers, in the intuitive beliefs of the human mind. While any instance and degree of design prove the existence of a designer, the sum total of all instances and all degrees must be taken, in order to a full letowleclon of the designers; and if, in all the instances, unity of design be manifested, then the existence of one designer, adequate to all the work, is proved. The therefore, requires the examination of all orders of objects and creatures, of a:I degrees of coin plexity and completeness in the properties, qualities, constitutions, and relations, physi cal, mental, and moral, which they display. The examination may be practicable only in part, and only as to results; but in proportion as it can be completc..y mad- and can • be extended also to the means and processes by which the design has Inc]] carried into effect, the proof of high qualities in the designer will be increased. The proof of design in Paley's often cited instance of a watch, picked up in crossing a head , cannot be set aside by raising questions concerning the length of time employed. or the instruments used in its construction; and 'while the slightest inspection of it may furnish proof of design, the proof will be strengthened and the display of design increased by a thorough and skillful examination of its complicated mechanism. If machinery that will make many watches be examined, the degree of design will be proportionally greater; and if a watch could be made to throw off other watches as a part of its work, instead of the proof of design being abrogated, it would be marvelously increased. Some persons,
indeed, claiming to be philosophers, seek to limit all investigation to the phenomena of nature, denying or disregarding efficient and final causes as either not existing or not proved. They reason is the sole cause of thelipparect design which exists ancf-which COmbinatiou of natttrar triat4ials and 'ck:^•es." But, to this assertion it is sufficient to reply that it fails to account (1) for the existence of the natural materials and forces; (2) for the combination of them in the production of one result; (3) for the existence of the reason of men, which is capable of reflection, and (4) that it does not show how reason cat he the cause of a clesigu—or of anything else— which is only apparent, not real. The history of mankind shows that there has at all times existed, in the mind, some idea of God, or of gods, or of some supernahn•al beings, to be sought, worshiped, or feared. Some, indeed, have asserted that the most degraded tribes have no such idea, and that the deaf and dumb also are destitute of it until they are instructed. But to this it is answered that while, in the lowest degradation, the Vold of the idea may he nearly or quite extinguished, enou•h of dark superstition remaias to show that the light once shone; as, in an extinguished or dimly burtsieg lamp, the very blackness of the wick proves the previoua existence of a brighter flame. And, as to the deaf and dumb, grantiug the aims alleged, it cannot be certainly maintained that they have no idea of God, because they. in their want of education, cannot express it in lanpulg,.•; or we, in our imperfect intercourse with them. cannot draw it forth from their minds Same have regarded the idea of God as innate in the human mind, from the fact that the belief in his existence has been to general in all ages of the world. But this theory Is now held, if at all, only in the modihed form that in the development of the mind the idea of God is certainly reached through the study of nature and of man.