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and natural world, is what might be anticipated, on the principle that they are not only designs of the same author, but that they also bear relation to the same common end; and it is only when thus viewed that the works of the visible creation afford not only (as in Bishop Butler's profound argument) strong corroborations, but as we shall presently endeavour to shew, beautiful illustrations and impressive manifestations of the power, the glory, and love of God, not only as the creator of heaven and earth, but as our own parent and friend who has taught us by his word.

If with this view we look upon the outline of this great system of analogies, omitting all subtle links, and all topics which might demand more attention than ordinary readers care to afford, we may enumerate the similar characters of adaptation to our wants and capacities, the similar marks of that pervading compensation by which good is developed from evil-the same permanence of principle, and capacity of conforming to varied circumstances, not to be discerned in human contrivances the same adaptation to a transient state-the same practical simplicity and speculative difficultythe same internal power to work on the better and purer feelings, and impress devotional sentiment. On these topics we shall avoid detail. Some of them are well illustrated, by Whewell, Buckland, and the other authors of the Bridgewater Treatises; and some involve lengthened disquisition, which is not our purpose.

For this reason we cannot dwell as fully as we would desire on that singu lar provision by which the history of redemption and the institutions of revealed religion commencing in the garden of Eden, has preserved its continuity. And still changing its external forms with the developments of the social progress through so many extreme changes and revolutions, developed from itself provisions and changes suitable to all; without losing, through all, a single feature of its identity. This, could we follow in detail so broad and deep a view, might be paralleled in the changeful revolutions, by which the features and productions of physical nature, can be traced into adaptations to the progress of social change; the domestic bird and beast-the garden and agricultural production--the metal

and coal formations. In both branches of the comparison-wonderfully exhibiting principles of stability and provisional adaptation, and contrasting with the works of human skill, the obsolete laws and institutions-the empires surviving in a name-the unrecording monuments-the knowledge confuted by time-the dead language-the speculation abandoned and forgottenthings which contemplated with a narrow view, have ever imparted a prevailing sceptical sense to the historical inquirer. While the Christian philosopher alone, looking on the whole but as the manifestation of the one great plan, alike traceable in all its parts: the moral, social, spiritual, and physical, may apply the reflection of Cicero, in

a

more comprehensive sense-Opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ confirmat. Such is the characteristic attribute of the divine architect, however traced, whether in the world that he has made, or the word that he has spoken.

In the same manner, we might select numerous instances to shew, that while in both the natural and revealed systems, the common uses and applica tions are of the most practical kind, and accommodated to our most urgent wants and simplest perceptions, there are heights and depths of contrivance and design, which baffle and perplex the deepest research. In each, there is manifestly a system perfect in itself, yet as obviously forming a portion of a further system. For this purpose we might detail the social provisions of Christianity, which form the broad foundation of the civilized world; and in like manner the natural adaptations of our mundane system to the same great ends; while in both we are led by the course of our enquiry to the outworks of the infinite and eternal, to the mysterious, inscrutable, and boundless empire of the universal mind. So that while we are taught and fed-guided, governed, and maintained, we are presented from afar with perceptions calculated to raise our wonder and admiration, and repress our presumption : whether we search with the speculative astronomer among the nebule which fade from our eyes into the depths of the illimitable void-or scrutinize with the daring logic of the theologian, those brief and obscure intimations of the counsels and purposes of the Omniscient, which seem

to ex

hibit a remotely awful outline of another world upon the shores of a dread hereafter.

It would be still easier to enter upon an analogy for the physical portion of which so much interesting material has been recently compiled; in the examples which might be brought together to exhibit that principle of compensation which pervades the natural world. In this, as in the scheme of redemption—much of real, and much of at least apparent evil is so modified or counterbalanced, as to produce a greater sum of good, not otherwise to be obtained, by any apparent means. In the one, for instance, the notion of a responsible agent capable of virtue and of legal observance, implies freedom and the power to err. Yet from this necessary imperfection-the want of which would imply either a less perfect creation or a manifest contradiction in terms, arises a beautiful system of moral provisions, the result of which is a higher order of virtues fortitude, patience, humility, self-conquest, charity, that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things;" the sublime heroism of adversity, and the enduring walk of faith:-virtues and graces confirmed, and approved by discipline and trial, by which imperfection is made the means of a higher perfection in the end. So when the eye of the historian and the naturalist turns on the progress of human things, as affected by the physical circumstances of the world-a combination of principles wonderfully similar, appears with the utmost clearness. The hardships arising from climate and soil-from the elemental convulsion, and various incidental disturbances of earth, sea, and sky, give rise to those preciselyanalogous changes which urge on the progress of the social world; and are main instruments for the development of the wonderful resources of the human intellect, which without them would have no earthly object or end. These processes, of which an ascending progress in the scale of moral and social being seems to be the beautiful result, while they necessarily involve the notion of imperfection, will thus appear equally essential to the supposition of the most perfect conceivable state of things, that which includes progression and moral advancement. Without this the highest notion that

can be legitimately attained, by humanreason, is a moral stagnation-a repose nearly tantamount to the idea of nonexistence; and which, not being conformable to any actual constitution of mind within the possibility of human comprehension, we have no right to affirm as the condition of a perfect state.

And here as in many other instances, which were we not pledged to a peculiar view of the subject, we might notice of these great branches of divine study, one throws a clear light upon the difficulties of the other. If among the many beautiful provisions of divine wisdom for the development of order from disturbance, and spiritual good from moral evil, the natural philosopher can detect among the operations of nature, signs of disorder for which no compensation can be discovered to exist; and if the moralist can detect a sum of evil unbalanced by any resulting prevalence of moral good.— Here, too, the oracle of divine truth, interposes with its corresponding light, and solves the doubts of the astronomer and the geologist, by affirming the very conclusion to which they would conduct, to be also a portion of the plan. For whether the slow but sure operation of a resisting medium—or the igneous and aqueous elements of the geologist are to be the instru ments; it predicts a coming day when this transitory scene-the stage of more transient things-is to pass away and leave a void in the heavens. In like manner, moral evil, imperfectly counteracted here,-is in the revealed purpose of the great Creator, but the beginning of an eternal and the portion of an infinite system, wherein all that is difficult shall be cleared, and all imperfection done. away.

A beautiful result of this profound and extensive analogy would be, the probable inferences which our knowledge of the natural world may, on an attentive consideration supply, as to the more remote, or the invisible portions of that spiritual system, of which so little is before us distinctly. For example: while within the narrow sphere of our sensations, great disorders, and irregularities, and evils hard to be accounted for,-sterile regions, inclement changes, human suffering, and crime, and the like, surround our steps, and meet our eyes wherever we

turn them. When we take a wider view, these small disturbances are lost in the immensity of a larger sphere, wherein all is beautifully regular, bright, and enduring. The desert contracts into a speck the tempest subsides into a whisper-human suffering into an infinitismal antedate of the grave. Planet whirls beyond planet-sun beyond sun gives light to unseen worlds; system beyond system, stretch upward and downward, and every way into the illimitable depths of space,-like the kingdoms and states of the empire of the Universal Spirit, thronged with life, and bound together by the chain of the supreme law of eternity. If from this vast view we follow up the analogy, and, contemplating the small portion of the scheme of God, which he has found desirable to reveal to us by his word, a new and beautiful perspective into eternity opens before the Christian's mind. For, as he knows in part the awful importance of his own being, and as, independent of this knowledge, he might conjecture the superior importance of mind to matter, it is to be inferred that he "who made all worlds," and who died for man, has not destined him, with all his vast capabilities of knowledge and love, to occupy a mean or obscure part in his eternal empire: that, as the starry world transcends this little scene, so shall his future existence transcend the fleeting present, as the partial evil is lost in the universal good, so shall the sufferings of this present life be forgotten in the glorious happiness hereafter.

Incautious minds are apt to convert remote analogies into proofs, and to found the most awfully important conclusions on the assumptions of the imagination. But, to perceive these analogies is the work of trained reflection they are the dogmatic theology of the great system. They demand the use of the reasoning faculty and the imagination, and are not correctly perceptible but to the mind educated to the perception of systematic order. As, in the right understanding of the Scripture, nothing is rightly to be explained but from an allowance for the whole; so in the perusal of the great external volume of nature, the uninstructed eye will be more likely to be struck by the partial irregularities,and by transient and local evils, than by the wonderful unity and comprehensive harmoniousness of the whole. Yet, as there is in the precepts and leading doctrines of reVOL. IX.

vealed religion, ample provision for its r purpose-the instruction and conversion of the simple; and, as it can be shewn that, in the practical portion of both its doctrinal principle, and of its moral code, there is contained a natural tendency to alter and renew the corrupt heart. So it may, on a little reflection, appear that there is a similar tendency in the phenomena of the natural world to operate strongly and beneficially on every mind that is awake to such impressions.

In passing to the notice of these, we should premise, that a large portion of mankind appear insensible to either the influences of religion or those of external nature; but, on a more exact view it may be, in both cases, attributable to causes of the same class,-the mind engrossed by worldly objects, and wholly under the dominion of sordid and lowering passions. is also, in all a capacity of being awakened to a momentary sense of nature or of divine truth.

There

Most people are more or less awake to the influences of natural scenery. This susceptibility is the foundation of the landscape-painter's art, and the better part of the poet's; it is the study or the taste of the intellectual and refined; and almost every one professes to be subject to it in some degree. Nor can we consistently with our philosophy, suppose that the high-souled touches of feeling and fancy which are at the bottom of all this, were designed to be waste and sterile dispositions of our nature. We cannot believe that the rapturous elevation of heart-that the kindling inspiration-the vividly colored impression of sentiment, that the tone of feeling which varies, like the many-coloured reflections of prismatic light, with every changing aspect of nature, has no better design than to glitter on the tourist's page, or to evaporate in poetical mediocrity.

In truth, the mind that studies nature rightly, must perceive in the class of impressions of which we are now speaking, something still more closely establishing the analogy we have been dwelling upon. We have often felt something of an admonitory and preceptive power in the aspect of a striking and lonely scene, that is well worth tracing out. It is particularly to be recognized in the tendency of those who are most alive to the effects of scenery, to moralize upon the appearances of nature, to find, "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

sermons in stones, and good in every thing." The same spiritualizing tendency even appears in a considerable department of language; hope and fear, care and pleasure, have found a common idiom in the changes of scene and sky. But it is meanwhile to be observed that these beautiful and often affecting moral impressions which crowd thickly on the mind, as soon as it becomes touched by the spirit of nature, are not in reality to be traced to any precise propriety of comparison, or any real significance in the appearance of the phenomena around us. But a tone of feeling is awakened, which compels the fancy into a train of emotions, moral and religious in their nature. The spirit becomes, by a latent but real provision, percipient of a purer intercourse; the spiritual portion of human nature is for a moment extricated from the debasements of the world, and restored to the perceptions of its better nature.

From this it will be apparent, how admirably adapted are the influences of natural scenery to harmonize with those of the religion of the Gospel. And thus while the instructed eye of science can discover in the whole, and in the minutest part, proofs of creative wisdom and all-pervading beneficence; there is in the very music of the rill, the lowliest flower, the tinge of the sky, the decline or revolution of the year; a depth of heart appealing persuasion, which comes as the voice of God to the rightly disposed breast. It is thus the Christian miud will read, in the phenomena of nature, the types and shadows of its course through this low world into eternity. And thus to take an impressive instance, the changes of the year as they revolve before our eyes in their fleeting circle of deeply felt vicissitudes, seem to shadow out the correspondent seasons of human life-the blossomy youth, the ardent hopeful maturity, the uncertain harvest, the chill decline and decay, where poetry hangs its unavailing wreath, and philosophy drops the comparison, while the Christian but we reserve the continuation of this comparison for a moment more, that we may interpose some remarks from which it may derive a fuller interest.

If the worldly minded person who feels his mind repelled by the imagined gloom of spiritual religion, while he is profoundly ignorant of that purer and heavenlier peace which the world cannot give, were to ask us for some

sensible illustration of the nature of that happiness which the truly Christian spirit can extract from adversity itself, we should refer him to the well-known language of the great volume of nature for impressive, though perhaps forgotten experiences. We would desire him, to recall to his mind those hills and dales, those moors, and lakes, and streams, those lawns, and plantations, and forests, the haunts of earlier years, which even among the corruptions and troubles of the world cannot be recalled without the traces which they indelibly bear of older and better feelings-of affections and joys which would be called dead; but which the world has entombed alive in the corruptions which it too soon encrusts the heart. How often have such affecting recollections wrung the worldly breast, and drawn from its weariness the sentiment so affectingly expressed by Gray :

:

"I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary youth bestow,

And breathe a second spring" We would assure him, that the freshness of heart, the singleness and sim plicity of view, and the disengaged freedom, to which he would in his wisdom refer these recollected gleams of early peace, are to be recovered in the cultivation of that wisdom and those affections, which they who know are beautifully said to become "as little children." The Christian, as he becomes more and more disengaged from the fallacies and snares of the world, gains by a parity of progress a proportional sense of more pure, holy, and true affections. He not only becomes "alive unto God," but as a consequence, he acquires a sense of his presence in all his works; he reads the same mind in all; to him every object is a touch of the hand "which createth all worlds, and without him nothing was made that is made." All is but a sacred language, of which the words were pronounced by the Almighty voice ere the world was made.

In the contemplation of this glorious world, the religious spirit alone is truly awake to the effects of nature. The Christian philosopher only does not translate them into false and earthly meanings. He does not find in those works, which are thoughts of God, a sympathy with passions which he is forbidden to cherish. To him the slightest thing that bears the impress of divine power is filled with hallowed meaning; and it is impossible for him

to look abroad without being reminded of Him who has laid the foundations of the earth-and feeling that all things - in heaven and earth bear testimony to the one great truth, on which his present peace and future hope are built.

How beautifully to the mind thus prepared does the voice of the present season speak. And with what Sexquisite felicity have Christian moralists selected its fallen leaves and faded flowers as emblems of the tomb of man. And when the merely human instinct recoils in awe or terror from the fearfully impressive aspect of that event which terminates the shadowy vista of our days; how simply sublime is the added type which the Christian's hope supplies to complete the figure. Not more surely shall the withered flower again revive when the spring returns, than the dead, in Christ, shall rise at his second coming to judge the world.

With this view, how happily has the commemoration of the Redeemer's birth been placed in the very heart of this season of decay, illustrating as it were the passage through the valley of the shadow of death, disarming its terror and driving its gloom, and throwing an emblematic glory and moral sublimity over the ruins of the year.

There is, it will be thought, no real gloom in the aspect of winter. The social spirit brightens as the face of nature gathers increasing desolation;

it brings round the reunions of home circles; it teems with young associations of festive liberty; the most spiritstirring hours are those of the sharp clear frost, and pleasant firesides of December. But, alas, how soon are these but the recollections of things departed-the shadows of the tomb. Most deeply interwoven with the solemn feeling, that our earthly joys are leaving us. As we advance through life, Christmas comes stamped with the memory of faces, which have ceased to greet us in the social ring. And the scenes where happiness breathed are sad, because they are become lonely. Now it is here that the Christian spirit may still extract a solemn pleasure from the associations of the season, from which life has thus departed into futurity. And as the parents of his childhood, and the loved companions of his youth, throng round him with the smiles and words of early years, faith and hope throw their blessed light from heaven upon the beautiful shades of remembered love. His very social affections breathe in heaven where his heart unites them all with Christ. And as the day of his departure approaches, it is welcome as was once the morn that was to light him on the homebound journey to meet the kindred of his younger days. Such is the moral of nature, to the mind that reads it with the one true prepa ration-the volume written by the hand of God.

THE HOURS.

At early dawn, when from the eastern hill
The golden eye of morn awakes the prime ;
And dewy mists, from lowland field and rill
Breathe upward, while each bowery wild lies still;
Methought I've heard the low-toned wheels of Time
Up the far dusk, keeping their way sublime

Still constant on; while mortal labors stay.

And hearing, sighed ! 'tis thus the moments keep
Their fleeting course, and bear our lives away
With even swiftness, whether toil, or sleep,
Or pleasure cheat us, with supposed delay,—

Mocked by the still-paced round of night and day.
They-like the river to its far-off shore

Through light from darkness glide; once seen, and seen no more.

J. U. U.

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