dmire their wonderful utility? To
what purpose are they not adapted? Man, who has many ends to accomplish,
in common with the beast of the field; who has hunger to alleviate, thirst
to slake, and has likewise other and higher ends, for the attainment of
which he is peculiarly qualified by means of _hands_. Adapted by his
constitution to inhabit all climes, he has hands to adapt his clothing to
the same, whether torrid, temperate or frigid. Possessed of the knowledge
of the utility of the soil, he has hands to cultivate it. Located far
distant oftentimes from the running stream, these hands enable him to
disembowel the earth and there find an abundant supply of the
all-necessary fluid. Endowed with rational ideas, pen in _hand_ he can
transmit them to his fellows far away, or to generations unborn. Heir and
lord of earth and ocean, his hands enable him to possess and control the
same, without which, notwithstanding all his reason, he could do neither,
but would have to crouch beneath the superior strength of the brute, and
fly for shelter to crags inaccessible to his beastly sovereign.

The only creature that has the reason to manage the world, has the
physical organization to do it. No _beast_ with man's reason could do
this, and no _man_ with the mere instinct of a brute could do it. How
marvellous, then this adaptation! How wondrous the adaptation of
everything, and how astonishing that any man, with all these things in
view, can for one moment forbear to admit a God. Let him try _a chance
experiment_. Let him take the letters of the alphabet and throw them about
promiscuously and then see how long ere they would move of their own
accord and arrange themselves into words and sentences. He may avail
himself of the whole benefit of his scheme; he may have the advantage of
an energy or power as a momentum to set them in motion; he may put these
letters into a box sufficiently large for the purpose, and then shake them
as long as may seem him good, and when, in this way, they shall have
become intelligible language, I will admit that he will have some reasons
for doubting a God. If this should seem too much like _artificial_ mind,
he may take some little animal, all constructed at his hands, and
dismember its limbs and dissect its body, and then within some vessel let
him throw its various parts at random, and seizing that vessel shake it
most lustily till bone shall come to bone, joint to joint, and the little
creature be