We see only parts of the great sequences that are taking place in nature; and it is on this account we seek for the causes of what we _know_ in the parts of the sequences that are _unknown_. If our senses had originally enabled us to discriminate every element of bodies, and consequently, all the minute changes which take place in these, as clearly as the more obvious changes at present perceived by us; in short, if, between two known events, we had never _discovered_ any thing intermediate and unknown, forming a new antecedent of the consequent observed before, our notion of a cause would have been very different from that mysterious unintelligible something which we now conceive it to be; and we should then, perhaps, have found as little difficulty in admitting it to be what it simply and truly is,--only another name for the immediate invariable antecedent of any event,--as we now find in admitting the _form_ of a body, to be only another name for the _relative position_ of the parts that constitute it. But,--I have said in my Essay,--though the powers of created things be nothing more than their relation to certain events that invariably attend them, is this definition consistent with the notion which we form of the power of the Creator? or, Is not _his_ efficiency altogether different in nature, as well as in degree? The omnipotence of God, it must, indeed, be allowed, bears to every created power the same relation of awful superiority, which his infinite wisdom and goodness bear to the humble knowledge and virtue of his creatures. But as we know his wisdom and goodness, only by knowing what that human wisdom and goodness are, which, with all their imperfection, he has yet permitted to know and adore him,--so, it is only by knowing created power, weak and limited as it is, that we can rise to the contemplation of his omnipotence. In contemplating it, we consider only his _will_, as the direct _antecedent_ of those glorious effects which the universe displays. The power of God is not any thing different from God; but is the Almighty himself, willing whatever seems to him good, and creating or altering all things by his very will to create or alter. It is enough for our devotion to trace every where the characters of the Divinity,--of provident arrangement _prior_ to this system of things,--and to know, therefore, that, without that divine will as _antecedent_, nothing could have been. Wherever we turn our eyes,--to the earth--to the heavens--to the myriads of beings that live and move around us--or to those more than myriads of worlds, which seem themselves almost like animated inhabitants of the infinity through which they range,--above us, beneath us, on every side, we discover, with a certainty that admits not of doubt, intelligence and design, that must have preceded the existence of every thing which exists. Yet, when we analyse those great, but obscure, ideas which rise in our mind,