Lectures on Natural Theology; Or, Nature and the Bible from the Same Author Delivered Before the Lowell Institute, Boston (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE II. PRINCIPLES OF BELIEF. ADAPTATION OF OUR BODIES TO OUR WANTS AND TO THE WORLD. Perfect provision for organic beings. No provision in material world for man's highest nature. Claims of the Bible. A natural provision for man. Principles of belief. Theories of creation. first cause. Matter might be eternal. Beginning of life. Antagonism of physical forces and vitality. Apparent harmony between them, Man an effect. His creation to be accounted for. The germ as wonderful as the developed being. Bible account of creation. What we should expect to find in such a creation. Nature an unchangeable record. Questions that would' arise without the Bible. Aid of geology. The existence of beings, and not their mode of origin, proof of skill and power. Adaptation of our bodies to our use and to the world. Relations to the world established through the senses. Distinctive use of each sense. Conditions necessary for sight. Relation of light to the atmosphere. Form of objects and effects of surface. Structure of the eye. Sense of hearing gives knowledge of objects beyond the range of vision, Mechanism of the ear. Taste and smell. No special mechanism. Design shown by the use. Touch. Kinds of knowledge given by it. All the senses connected with the nervous system. Vegetative life. Relation of the body to the world considered. The atmosphere. Struct lire of the lung. Nutrition. Sleep. Animals fitted for particular zones. Man for all. No special sciences needed to show our adaptation to the world, Personality of the Creator inferred from the provision for our personality. Antagonism in nature. In the last lecture we indicated something of the object aimed at in this course, and the topics to be introduced for proof and illustration. We shall first attempt to show that...