It is in the Christian dispensation, as in the material world.

In both it is as the great First Cause, that the Deity is most undeniably manifest.

When once launched in regular motion upon the bosom of space, and endowed with all their properties and relations of weight and mutual attraction, the heavenly bodies appear to pursue their courses according to secondary laws, which account for all their sublime regularity.

So Christianity proclaims its Divine Author chiefly in its first origin and development.

When it had once received its impulse from above--when it had once been infused into the minds of its first teachers--when it had gained full possession of the reason and affections of the favored few--it might be--and to the Protestant, the rational Christian, it is impossible to define when it really was--left to make its way by its native force, under the ordinary secret agencies of all-ruling Providence.