l4 ' INTRODUCTION.

qualities of brute matter and the constitution of living things, between the tendency to derange- ment and the conservative influences by which such a tendency is counteracted, between the oflice of the minutest speck and of the most general laws: it will, we trust, be diflicult or impossible to exclude from our conception of this wonderful system, the idea of a harmonizing, a preserving, a contriving, an intending mind; of a Wisdom, Power, and Goodness far exceeding the limits of our thoughts.

CHAPTER IV.

Division of the Subject.

‘ making a survey of the universe, for the purpose of pointing out such correspon- dencies and adaptations as we have mentioned, we shall suppose the general leading facts of the course of nature to be known, and the explana- tions of their causes now generally established among astronomers and natural philosophers to be conceded. We shall assume therefore that the earth is a solid globe of ascertained magni- tude, which travels round the sun, in an orbit nearly circular, in a period of about three hun- dred and sixty-five days and a quarter, and in the mean time revolves, in an inclined position,

upon its own axis in about twenty-four hours,