VII.

RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

"IT is true, that science has not made Nature as expressive of God in the first instance, or to the beginner in religion, as it was in earlier times. Science reveals a rigid, immutable order; and this to common minds looks much like self-subsistence, and does not manifest intelligence, which is full of life, variety, and progressive operation. Men, in the days of their ignorance, saw an immediate Divinity accomplishing an immediate purpose, or expressing an immediate feeling, in every sudden, striking change of nature—in a storm, the flight of a bird, &c.; and Nature, thus interpreted, became the sign of a present, deeply interested Deity. Science undoubtedly brings vast aids, but it is to prepared minds, to those who have begun in another school. The greatest aid it yields consists in the revelation it makes of the Infinite. It aids us not so much by showing us marks of design in this or that particular thing as by showing the Infinite in the finite. Science does this office when it unfolds to us the unity of the universe,

which thus becomes the sign, the efflux of one unbounded intelligence, when it reveals to us in every work of Nature infinite connections, the influences of all-pervading laws-when it shows us in each created thing unfathomable, unsearchable depths, to which our intelligence is altogether unequal. Thus Nature explored by science is a witness of the Infinite. It is also a witness to the same truth by its beauty; for what is so undefined, so mysterious as beauty? Dr. Channing.

PART II.

Literature and Art.

Notes from Books.

1.

"A

GREAT advantage is derived from the occasional

practice of reading together, for each person selects different beauties and starts different objections: while the same passage perhaps awakens in each mind a different train of associated ideas, or raises different images for the purposes of illustration.”— Francis Horner.

"C'EST

2.

Y'EST ainsi que je poursuis la communication de quelque esprit fameux, non afin qu'il m'enseigne mais afin que je le connaisse, et que le connaissant, s'il le faut, je l'imite."-Montaigne.