If any one
would rightly impress on his mind the great advantages which he
derives from the sun, let him imagine himself living through only
one month, and see how it would be with all his undertakings, if
it were not day but night. He would then be sufficiently
convinced out of his own experience, especially if he had much
work to carry on in the street or in the fields. . . . From the
sun we learn to recognize when it is midday, and by knowing this
point of time exactly, we can set our clocks right, on which
account astronomy owes much to the sun. . . . By help of the sun
one can find the meridian. . . . But the meridian is the basis
of our sun-dials, and generally speaking, we should have no
sun-dials if we had no sun." Vernunftige Gedanken von den
Absichter der naturlichen Dinge, 1782. pp.74-84.
Or read the account of God's beneficence in the institution of
"the great variety throughout the world of men's faces, voices,
and hand-writing," given in Derham's Physico-theology, a book
that had much vogue in the eighteenth century. "Had Man's body,"
says Dr. Derham, "been made according to any of the Atheistical
Schemes, or any other Method than that of the infinite Lord of
the World, this wise Variety would never have been: but Men's
Faces would have been cast in the same, or not a very different
Mould, their Organs of Speech would have sounded the same or not
so great a Variety of Notes, and the same Structure of Muscles
and Nerves would have given the Hand the same Direction in
Writing.
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