Rather strikingly contrasted, in respect of execution, with Hume's chapter on Miracles, comes the one next in order on a Providence and a Future State, which, for the skill with which the fallacy involved in it is disguised, may be regarded as quite a masterpiece of false reasoning. Among its leading propositions there is but one which does not command immediate assent. That we can argue but from what we know; that of causes, known to us only by their effects, our estimate ought to be exactly proportioned to the effects; that of a Creator manifested only by His works, no higher qualities, no greater degrees of power, intelligence, justice, or benevolence, can be confidently predicated--whatever be conjectured--than are apparent in his workmanship: all this, on one moment's reflection, is perceived to be indisputable. Needs must it be, however reluctantly, admitted that nothing can be more illogical than to return back to the cause, and infer from it other effects beyond those by which alone it is known to us, or to infer from creative attributes, distinctly manifested, the existence of other and not apparent attributes, endowed with some efficacy additional to that possessed by the former. But does it hence follow that faith in a superintending Providence is so mere a matter of 'conceit and imagination,' a faith so absolutely irrational as Hume considered it? A candid examination of God's works will warrant us in coming to a widely different conclusion. Among those works is man--a being who, in spite of the utter insignificance of his greatest _performances_, is capable of forming most exalted _conceptions_ of justice, benevolence, and goodness in general, and of feeling the most eager desire to act up to his own ideal. If the divine notions of goodness in its several varieties be not identical with the human, it can only be because they are superior; and so, too, of the divine love of, and zeal for, goodness. It cannot be that the Creator is inferior to the creature in virtues which the creature derives from Him alone. Demonstrably, therefore, God is good and just in the very highest degree in which those qualities can be conceived by man. Demonstrably, too, since the universe is the work of His hands, He must be possessed of power which, if not necessarily unbounded, is at least as boundless as the universe. Thus, rigidly arguing from effects to causes, and scrupulously proportioning the one to the other, man sees imaged on the face of creation a creator, both realising his highest conception of goodness, and wielding measureless might. Is not such a being worthy to be looked up to, and confided in, and adored and loved as a superintending providence? Is not faith in such a providence not simply not irrational, but the direct result of a strictly inductive process? And would it be an irrational stretch of faith sanguinely to hope, if not implicitly to believe, that an union of infinite justice with