Sacred History of the World

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: apt to create each other, neither will, as knowledge advances and judgment improves, be attached to the mind of any educated, philanthropic, or welhneaning individual. LETTER III. On tke Laws qf Nature- What they really are-Their divine Origin and Operation. By steadily regarding all things as the designed and purposed creation of God, we shall form juster notions than we commonly do on what are called the laws of nature; and as these are what are almost only taken into consideration, in the modern writings on the physical sciences, as the causes of the phenomena they describe, it will be important to our due comprehension of the sacred history of the world, that we should endeavour to establish in our minds a correct perception of what they really are; especially if we desire to avoid attaching to them any atheistical signification, or wish not to use them as mere words or forms of pbrase. Both of these applications would be unworthy of an intellectual man. Whoever values rightness of thought or advancement of knowledge, will not willingly make use of any terms without a distinct and clear meaning in his own mind when he chooses the verbal expressions by which he denotes and imparts it. Nothing more perpetuates error than the repetition of words of course, without just ideas being connected with them. The laws of nature have been stated to be the properties of material things; the modes of then- mutual action and the rules of their causations: and in this largeness of sense they imply the acting powers of nature, the direction or regulation of these powers in their operation, and the effects produced by them. Laws of nature. In this pbrase are Included all properties of the portions of the material world; all modes of action and rules of causation according ...