4. Another ground of satisfactory reflection, having the same tendency, is to be found in the admirable order and consistency, the subordination and proportion of parts, which we find to prevail in the universe, as far as our discoveries reach. We have, it may be, a multitude almost innumerable of worlds, but no symptom of crowding, of confusion, of interference. All such defects are avoided by the manner in which these worlds are distributed into systems;--these systems, each occupying a vast space, but yet disposed at distances before which their own dimensions shrink into insignificance;--all governed by one law, yet this law so concentrating its operation on each system, that each proceeds as if there were no other, and so regulating its own effects that perpetual change produces permanent uniformity. This is the kind of harmonious relation which we perceive in that part of the universe, the mechanical part namely, the laws of which are best known to us. In other provinces, where our knowledge is more imperfect, we can see glimpses of a similar vastness of combination, producing, by its very nature, completeness of detail. Any analogy by which we can extend such views to the moral world, must be of a very wide and indefinite kind; yet the contemplation of this admirable relation of the arrangements of the physical creation, and the perfect working of their laws, is well calculated to give us confidence in a similar beauty and perfection in the arrangements by which our moral relations are directed, our higher powers and hopes unfolded. We may readily believe that there is, in this part of the creation also, an order, a subordination of some relations to others, which may remove all difficulty arising from the vast multitude of moral agents and actions, and make it possible that the superintendence of the moral world shall be directed with as exact a tendency to moral good, as that by which the government of the physical world is directed to physical good. We may perhaps see glimpses of such an order, in the arrangements by which our highest and most important duties depend upon our relation to a small circle of persons immediately around us: and again, in the manner in which our acting well or ill results from the operation of a few principles within us; as our conscience, our desire of moral excellence, and of the favour of God. We can hardly consider such principles otherwise than as intended to occupy their proper place in the system by which man’s destination is to be determined; and thus, as among the means of the government and superintendence of God in the moral world.