considering. Is, then, the question wholly incapable of solution, which all these learned and ingenious men have so entirely failed in solving? Must the difficulty remain forever unsurmounted, and only be approached to discover that it is insuperable? _Must the subject, of all others the most interesting for us to know well, be to us always as a sealed book, of which we can never know anything?_ From the nature of the thing--from the question relating to the operation of a power which, to our limited faculties, must ever be incomprehensible--there seems too much reason for believing that nothing precise or satisfactory ever will be attained by human reason regarding this great argument; and that the bounds which limit our views will only be passed when we have quitted the encumbrances of our mortal state, and are permitted to survey those regions beyond the sphere of our present circumscribed existence. The other branch of Natural Theology, that which investigates the evidences of Intelligence and Design, and leads us to a clear apprehension of the Deity’s power and wisdom, is as satisfactorily cultivated as any other department of science, rests upon the same species of proof, and affords results as precise as they are sublime. This branch will never be distinctly known, and will always so disappoint the inquirer as to render the lights of Revelation peculiarly acceptable, although even those lights leave much of it still involved in darkness--still mysterious and obscure.[2] Yet let us endeavor to suggest some possible explication, while we admit that nothing certain, nothing entirely satisfactory can be reached. The failure of the great writers whose works we have been contemplating may well teach us humility, make us distrust ourselves, and moderate within us any sanguine hopes of success. But they should not make us wholly despair of at least showing in what direction the solution of the difficulty is to be sought, and whereabouts it will probably be found situated, when our feeble reason shall be strengthened and expanded. For one cause of their discomfiture certainly has been their aiming too high, attempting a complete solution of a problem which only admitted of approximation, and discussion of limits.