the retina, conveying itself by the optic nerves into the common sensory without confusion? Can a rational being survey this scene and say there is no God? Can a mind think on this stupendous bodily organ, the eye, and not adore the Wisdom that contrived it?” And the following is not only most interesting, but anticipates, with much strength, a line of argument important to the sceptical philosophy of our own day. The German Buchner binds up his atheistic philosophy between the two covers of Force and Matter; and many in our own country follow in the same train of singularly forgetful thought: forgetful because force and matter are really not sufficient to constitute a universe; the regulative and directive power which controls force and manipulates matter to its will is assuredly as essential a factor as either force or matter.[54] Thus Dr. Watts argues in his remarks: THE DIRECTION OF MOTION A PROOF OF DEITY. “Yet, after all, I know it may be replied again, that gravitation is a power which is not limited in its agency by any conceivable distances whatsoever; and therefore, when these starbeams are run out never so far into the infinite void by the force of their emission from the star, yet their gravitation towards the star, or some of the planetary worlds, which sometimes, perhaps, may be nearer to it, has perpetual influence to retard their motion by degrees, even as the motion of a comet is retarded by its gravitation towards the sun, though it flies to such a prodigious distance from the sun, and in time it is stopped and drawn back again and made to return towards its centre. And just so, may we suppose, all the sunbeams and starbeams that ever were emitted, even to the borders of the creation, to have been restrained by degrees by this principle of gravitation till, moving slower and slower, at last they are stopped in their progress and made to return toward their own or some other planetary system. And if so, then there is a perpetual return of the beams of light towards some or other of their bright originals, an everlasting circulation of these lucid atoms, which will hinder this eternal dilation of the bounds of the universe, and at the same time will equally prevent the wasting of the substance of the lucid bodies, the sun or stars. Well, but if this power of restraining and reducing the flight of starbeams be ascribed to this principle of gravitation, let us inquire what is this gravitation, which prevents the universe from such a perpetual waste of light? It cannot be supposed to be any real property or natural power inhering in matter or body, which exerts its influence at so prodigious a distance. I think, therefore, it is generally agreed, and with great reason, that it is properly the influence of a Divine power upon every atom