its proper operation, it may serve all the purposes of providence, than
if the great Creator were obliged every moment to adjust its parts, and
animate by his breath all the wheels of that stupendous machine.

But if we would have a more philosophical confutation of this theory,
perhaps the two following reflections may suffice.

57. _First_, it seems to me that this theory of the universal energy and
operation of the Supreme Being is too bold ever to carry conviction with
it to a man, sufficiently apprized of the weakness of human reason, and
the narrow limits to which it is confined in all its operations. Though
the chain of arguments which conduct to it were ever so logical, there
must arise a strong suspicion, if not an absolute assurance, that it has
carried us quite beyond the reach of our faculties, when it leads to
conclusions so extraordinary, and so remote from common life and
experience. We are got into fairy land, long ere we have reached the
last steps of our theory; and _there_ we have no reason to trust our
common methods of argument, or to think that our usual analogies and
probabilities have any authority. Our line is too short to fathom such
immense abysses. And however we may flatter ourselves that we are
guided, in every step which we take, by a kind of verisimilitude and
experience, we may be assured that this fancied experience has no
authority when we thus apply it to subjects that lie entirely out of the
sphere of experience. But on this we shall have occasion to touch
afterwards.[14]

[14] Section XII.

_Secondly,_ I cannot perceive any force in the arguments on which this
theory is founded. We are ignorant, it is true, of the manner in which