falls short of the mighty Being who sits behind them, projecting his works, harnessed with their controlling laws, upon the broad theatre of his creation. It is also true, that when we have made sufficient advance, when we have reached such an elevation on the high grounds of discovery, as to enable us to take a more commanding survey of the fields of Nature and Providence, a position from which the various details that have hitherto stood in detached prominence, monopolizing our attention, are seen to sink into place, and to blend in an economy of order and harmony, held together by the controlling lines of a few great principles, converging from every quarter to one point of combination, centering at the throne, and gathered in the grasp of God, then indeed the religious perceptions, hitherto obstructed in their way to him by the intervention of material processes, lately reckoned final, but now seen to be intermediate and subordinate, resume their true direction, and rest on their rightful object, and the religious convictions, trampling down the barriers of a superficial scepticism, lay hold more ardently and tenaciously than ever before, on the glorious

truth, that" of him, and through him, and to him, are all things, to whom be glory forever." But until we reach this point, - and but few of us in ordinary life have either the inclination or the ability to do so,- unless our religious cultivation keep pace with our intellectual, the explanations which an immature science furnishes of the phenomena of Nature, and the visible operations of the Divine Government, have undoubtedly the effect of increasing our distance from our Maker, of fastening our attention upon the engine itself, and of appropriating to the regularity, and the beauty, and the powers of the machinery, a large share of the admiration and awe, which are due to its Author. And so, until we become familiar with the broad views. which a more comprehensive instruction affords us, what we gain in intelligence, we are apt to lose in reverence and devotion; for "a moderate taste of philosophy," says Lord Bacon," is very apt to incline a man to Atheism, while a deep draught brings him back to God." Is not the child, gazing at the rainbow, and fancying he can discern the withdrawal of the Divine Hand, which has just paved, with many-hued beams, the bright

path of ascent by which his saints approach him, is not this child nearer his Creator, than the fluent scholar, who will elucidate for you the proximate causes of the lovely apparition, who will prate to you of reflection, and refraction, and prismatic rain-drops, and points of incidence, and deviation, and emergence? Does not the eye of the child pierce higher into the heavens, and the soul of the child nestle more closely and trustfully in the bosom of the Father, than the eye and the soul of the pseudo-philosopher, who contents himself with an acquaintance with the physical laws and constituents of the phenomenon, and pauses and turns away with indifference at the threshhold of the pavilion of the Omnipotent to which they conduct him? Now, in the primitive ages, in Job's day, men were children, in reference to physical science, and unconsciously overleaping many a wide tract of material process and contrivance, every natural wonder, or unusual providence, brought them, at once, face to face with God. It were well for us, if, in connection with our superior advantages, as men compared with them in our knowledge of nature, we entertained and cherished

their childlike persuasions of the constant proximity of the God of Nature and of Providence. For so we could scarcely fail to feel the frequent stirrings of the desire embodied in the text, the desire to hold communion with him in the dearest and most sacred of all the capacities he occupies towards us, as God of grace. Oh, that I knew where I might find him," says Job, "that I might come even unto his seat."

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Certainly, the difficulty of reaching Him is considerably enhanced to the man of hasty and impatient thought, by the intervention of those second causes, of whose offices and relations the imperfect information of most of us, gives us very partial and defective conceptions. Yet we may satisfy ourselves, by a very little consideration, that however lengthened the series of operations, God's power is just as indispensable to the maintainance of every process, to the origination of every impulse and movement that thrills along the chain, as if directly, and without the interposition of a single instrumentality between his fiat and its effect, he instantly achieved the result we are contemplating. You tell me that the doctrine of a particular providence is obselete, and

that God is now known to govern all things, and to produce all effects by general laws? Laws! What are God's laws? The expression of his will, the modes by which his designs are accomplished. And who can assure me, that in every spot of his great universe, where, at this moment, one of these laws is operative, there, issuing it and applying it, there is not a present and active God? For me, suffer me to believe, to recognize my Omnipresent Maker, now, this instant, at my side, meting out to me each inhalation of the breath which animates me, and keeping in action, and mingling in their proper combinations, and animating with the requisite energy, all the forces and functions by which each pulsation of the vital fluid is propelled throughout my frame. For, besides its truth, this conviction has this very great advantage. If I am thus conscious of his vicinity to me in the processions of nature, and the experiences of life, he becomes to me a near God, and not a God afar off, in the economy of his grace; so that when temptation assails me, or sin has vanquished me, or trouble harasses me, I have no far interval of distance to surmount to reach him,