3. The laws of material nature, such as we have described them, operate at all times, and in all places; affect every province of the universe, and involve every relation of its parts. Wherever these laws appear, we have a manifestation of the intelligence by which they were established. But a law supposes an agent, and a power; for it is the mode according to which the agent proceeds, the order according to which the power acts. Without the presence of such an agent, of such a power, conscious of the relations on which the law depends, producing the effects which the law prescribes, the law can have no efficacy, no existence. Hence we infer that the intelligence by which the law is ordained, the power by which it is put in action, must be present at all times and in all places where the effects of the law occur; that thus the knowledge and the agency of the Divine Being pervade every portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence and change. The laws of nature are the laws which he, in his wisdom, prescribes to his own acts; his universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events, his universal agency the only origin of any efficient force. This view of the relation of the universe to God has been entertained by many of the most eminent of those who have combined the consideration of the material world with the contemplation of God himself. It may therefore be of use to illustrate it by a few quotations, and the more so, as we find this idea remarkably dwelt upon in the works of that writer whose religious views must always have a peculiar interest for the cultivators of physical science, the great Newton. Thus, in the observations on the nature of the Deity with which he closes the “Opticks,” he declares the various portions of the world, organic and inorganic, “can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever living Agent, who being in all places, is more able by his will to move the bodies within his boundless uniform _sensorium_, and thereby to form and reform the parts of the universe, than we are by our will to move the parts of our own bodies.” And in the Scholium at the end of the “Principia,” he says, “God is one and the same God always and every where. He is omnipresent, not by means of his _virtue_ alone, but also by his _substance_, for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In him all things are contained, and move, but without mutual passion: God is not acted upon by the motions of bodies; and they suffer no resistance from the omnipresence of God.” And he refers to several passages confirmatory of this view, not only in the Scriptures, but also in writers who hand down to us the opinions of some of the most philosophical thinkers of the pagan world. He does not disdain to quote the poets, and among the rest, the verses of Virgil;