ning and without end; O thou, who art the life of all that truly live, those can never fail to find thee, who seek for thee within themselves. But, alas! the very gifts which thou bestowest upon us do so employ our thoughts, that they hinder us from perceiving the hand which conveys them to us. We live by thee, and yet we live without thinking on thee; but, O Lord, what is life in the ignorance of thee! A dead unactive piece of matter; a flower that withers; a river that glides away; a palace that hastens to its ruin; a picture made up of fading colours; a mass of shining ore; strike our imaginations, and make us sensible of their existence: we regard them as objects capable of giving us pleasure, not considering that thou conveyest, through them, all the pleasure which we imagine they give us. Such vain empty objects, that are only the shadows of being, are proportioned to our low and grovelling thoughts. That beauty which thou hast poured out on thy creation, is as a veil which hides thee from our eyes. As thou art a being too pure and exalted to pass through our senses, thou art not regarded by men, who have debased their nature, and have made themselves like the beasts that perish. So infatuated are they, that notwithstanding they know what is wisdom and virtue, which have neither sound, nor colour, nor smell, nor taste, nor figure, nor any other sensible quality, they can doubt of thy existence, because thou art not apprehended by the grosser organs of sense. Wretches that we are! we consider shadows as realities, and truth as a phantom. That which is nothing, is all to us; and that which is all, appears to us nothing. What do we see in all nature but thee, O my God! Thou, and only thou, appearest in every thing. When I consider thee, O Lord, I am swallowed up, and lost in contemplation of thee. Every thing besides.

thee; even my own existence vanishes and disappears in the contemplation of thee. I am lost to myself, and fall into nothing, when I think on thee. The man who does not see thee, has beheld nothing; he who does not taste thee, has a relish of nothing. His being is vain, and his life but a dream. Set up thyself, O Lord, set up thyself, that we may behold thee. As wax consumes before the fire, and as the smoke is driven away, so let thine enemies vanish out of thy presence. How unhappy is that soul who, without the sense of thee, has no God, no hope, no comfort to support him! But how happy the man who searches, sighs, and thirsts after thee! But he only is fully happy, on whom thou liftest up the light of thy countenance, whose tears thou hast wiped away, and who enjoys in thy loving-kindness the completion of all his desires. How long, how long, O Lord, shall I wait for that day when I shall possess, in thy presence, fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore? O my God, in this pleasing hope, my bones rejoice and cry out, Who is like unto thee! My heart melts away, and my soul faints within me when I look up to thee, who art the God of my life, and my portion to all eternity.""

N° 70. MONDAY, MAY 1, 1713.

-mentisque capacius altæ.-OVID. Met. i. 76.

Of thoughts enlarg'd, and more exalted mind.

As I was the other day taking a solitary walk in St. Paul's, I indulged my thoughts in the pursuit of a certain analogy between that fabric and the Christian church in the largest sense. The divine order

and economy of the one, seemed to be emblematically set forth by the just, plain, and majestic architecture of the other. And as the one consists of a

great variety of parts united in the same regular design, according to the truest art, and most exact proportion, so the other contains a decent subordination of members, various sacred institutions, sublime doctrines, and solid precepts of morality digested into the same design, and with an admirable concurrence tending to one view, the happiness and exaltation of human nature.

In the midst of my contemplation, I beheld a fly upon one of the pillars; and it straightway came into my head, that this same fly was a freethinker. For it required some comprehension in the eye of the spectator, to take in at one view the various parts of the building, in order to observe their symmetry and design. But to the fly, whose prospect was confined to a little part of one of the stones of a single pillar, the joint beauty of the whole, or the distinct use of its parts, were inconspicuous, and nothing could appear but small inequalities in the surface of the hewn stone, which in the view of that insect seemed so many deformed rocks and precipices.

The thoughts of a freethinker are employed on certain minute particularities of religion, the difficulty of a single text, or the unaccountableness of some step of Providence or point of doctrine to his narrow faculties, without comprehending the scope and design of Christianity, the perfection to which it raiseth human nature, the light it hath shed abroad in the world, and the close connexion it hath as well with the good of public societies, as with that of particular persons.

This raised in me some reflections on that frame or disposition which is called largeness of mind, its necessity towards forming a true judgment of things,

and, where the soul is not incurably stinted by nature, what are the likeliest methods to give it enlargement.

It is evident that philosophy doth open and enlarge the mind, by the general views to which men are habituated in that study, and by the contemplation of more numerous and distinct objects, than fall within the sphere of mankind in the ordinary pursuits of life. Hence it comes to pass, that philosophers judge of most things very differently from the vulgar. Some instances of this may be seen in the Theætetus of Plato, where Socrates makes the following remarks, among others of the like

nature.

When a philosopher hears ten thousand acres mentioned as a great estate, he looks upon it as an inconsiderable spot, having been used to contemplate the whole globe of earth. Or when he beholds a man elated with the nobility of his race, because he can reckon a series of seven rich ancestors; the philosopher thinks him a stupid ignorant fellow, whose mind cannot reach to a general view of human nature, which would shew him that we have all innumerable ancestors, among whom are crowds of rich and poor, kings and slaves, Greeks and barbarians,' Thus far Socrates, who was accounted wiser than the rest of the heathens, for notions which approach the nearest to Christianity.

As all parts and branches of philosophy, or speculative knowledge, are useful in that respect, astronomy is peculiarly adapted to remedy a little and narrow spirit. In that science there are good reasons assigned to prove the sun a hundred thousand times bigger than our earth, and the distance of the stars so prodigious, that a cannon-bullet, continuing in its ordinary rapid motion, would not arrive from hence at the nearest of them in the space of a

hundred and fifty thousand years. Those ideas wonderfully dilate and expand the mind. There is something in the immensity of this distance that shocks and overwhelms the imagination; it is too big for the grasp of a human intellect: estates, provinces, and kingdoms, vanish at its presence. It were to be wished a certain prince*, who hath encouraged the study of it in his subjects, had been himself a proficient in astronomy. This might have shewed him how mean an ambition that was, which terminated in a small part of what is itself but a point, in respect to that part of the universe which lies within our view.

But the Christian religion ennobleth and enlargeth the mind beyond any other profession or science whatsoever. Upon that scheme, while the earth, and the transient enjoyments of this life, shrink into the narrowest dimensions, and are accounted as 'the dust of a balance, the drop of a bucket, yea, less than nothing,' the intellectual world opens wider to our view. The perfections of the Deity, the nature and excellence of virtue, the dignity of the human soul, are displayed in the largest characters. The mind of man seems to adapt itself to the different nature of its objects; it is contracted and debased by being conversant in little and low things, and feels a proportionable enlargement arising from the contem. plation of these great and sublime ideas.

The greatness of things is comparative; and this does not only hold, in respect of extension, but likewise in respect of dignity, duration, and all kinds of perfection. Astronomy opens the mind, and alters our judgment, with regard to the magnitude of extended beings; but Christianity produceth a universal greatness of soul. Philosophy increaseth our