INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 373

mode of expression can the most cautious philo- sophy suggest, other than that He, to whom we thus endeavour to approach, is infinitely wise, powerful, and good?

5. But with sense and consciousness the his- tory of living things only begins. They have instincts, affections, passions, will. How entirely lost and bewildered do we find ourselves when we endeavour to conceive these faculties com- municated by means of general laws ! Yet they are so communicated from God, and of such laws he is the lawgiver. At what an immeasurable interval is he thus placed above every thing which the creation of the inanimate world alone would imply ; and how far must he transcend all ideas founded on such laws as we find there !

6. But we have still to go further and far higher. The world of reason and of morality is a part of the same creation, as the world of matter and of sense. The will of man is swayretl by rational motives ; its workings are inevitably compared with a rule of action; he has a con- science which speaks of right and wrong. These are laws of man’s nature no less than the laws of his material existence, or his animal impulses. Yet what entirely new conceptions do they in- volve? How incapable of being resolved into, or assimilated to, the results of mere matter, or mere sense! Moral good and evil, merit and demerit, virtue and depravity, if ever they are ‘the subjects of strict science, must belong to a