or compose them, the animal and vegetable, the terrestrial and marine fossils which distinguish the several formations, the latent causes and evident effects of volcanoes and earthquakes; the salt sea with its coral reefs, its caverns, submarine forests and beaches, its weeds, and pearls, and shells, and fishes, and zoophytes, and all its multifarious living things afford abundant matter for inquiry.

And then upon earth's surface, grass, herbs, and trees, from the lichen to the Baoab, all useful, all graceful, and most of them admirably beautiful, make botany a fascinating pursuit, and give charms to gardening and husbandry. Among the many different uses for which vegetable productions were evidently designed, it is pleasing to trace in all the fulfilment of one great purpose, that of preparing inorganic matter for the reception and sustenance of sentient creatures.

God's providence is nowhere more distinctly shewn than in the microscopic wonders of entomology. The insect world is a kind of fairy land, full of types and shadows of superior beings, full of strange coincidences with man's works, full of exquisite models to assist the inventions of art.

From the north to the south pole, wherever earth has an herb, or the sea a living thing, birds gladden man's eyes with their buoyant motions, graceful forms, and beautiful plumage, and his ears with their voices ;-voices, which, from the

songs of the nightingale to the chirpings of the sparrow, are full of interest and animation.

The natural history of quadrupeds is perhaps one of the most popular kinds of information. It scarcely needs an advocate with any one. The domesticated animals, particularly the horse and dog, are to us, as it were, ambassadors, or ministers residentiary, from their tribe, and secure our affections and prejudices in their favour.

It tends to widen our views of divine wisdom and power, to teach our dull minds something more of the meaning of that mysterious word "God," to remark through all the forms of vital existence the particular adaptation of every species to a particular place. Each species of algae, zoophyte, and fish, has its native district in the ocean. Each species of plant, of reptile, insect, bird, and beast, is adapted to its home in some one region of the earth. The heath is said to be indigenous only in the old world, the condor dwells only upon the Andes.

When, in contemplating the material creation, a sense of the inconceivable variety of its forms pains our faculties of comprehension, and strikes us with a kind of awe, let us turn to the laboratory of the chemist, and there behold the component parts, the things which to man's finite sight appear the elements of matter; and refresh ourselves with the thought of the clear and glorious light of that Almighty mind which produces infinite

variety from their perpetually changing combinations.

Scientific studies resemble the thick foliage of a Bannian wood, which deliberately and closely viewed, appears to be composed of a few majestic trees, whose bending boughs take root, and stand like stately pillars round the parent stock. The knowledge of one pre-supposes or includes the knowledge of many others.

The direct and sensible effects of the sun and moon's agency upon our terrestrial world, its atmosphere, and its tides, necessarily lead us to the consideration of the nature of those luminaries.

Astronomy then teaches us to contemplate the exhibition of wonders revealed by the solar system, to behold the planets and their satellites rolling in space, to trace the paths of comets, and to realize the probability, that myriads of unknown bodies are revolving in groups around our sun, and only rendered visible by entering our atmosphere.

It shews us the variations and revolutions of the fixed stars; it tells us, they are suns to other worlds; and farther distant still, it dimly reveals the concentrated rays of the suns of other planetary systems, beyond the lucid obscurity of the milky way.

Whether led by the admiration of sympathy or of emulation we entertain ourselves with works of art, seeing in the maker's ingenuity new tokens

of the great Creator's wisdom,-whether we occupy ourselves with the entertaining and instructive observations of natural philosophy, or follow with enchained attention the discoveries and demonstrations of mathematics and mechanics, whether we take a distant or a near view of the infinitude by which, in its forms of vastness and minuteness we are encompassed, our minds must be filled with the conviction that God is great, while our hearts overflow with the feeling that God is good.

As "prophecies shall cease" only when their predictions are all fulfilled, and time is no more; so shall knowledge "vanish away" only when its present imperfect forms, its theories, and systems, and classes have passed, before the clear brightness of the intuitive perception of truth. The consideration of the things that have been, may be, and are in the world, is producing a proper effect upon the Christian's soul, only when it enlarges and enlivens that Divine grace of love or charity, which, being infused by God himself, it is the work of prophecy and knowledge to prepare and perfect for that glorious heaven where both will be absorbed in love for ever.

XIX.-ON TEMPEST.

To a Christian whose spirits are composed and elevated by a sense of God's pardoning love, especially if that Christian be endowed with the faculty of seeing and feeling the beautiful and the sublime in nature, a thunder-storm presents one of the most noble and majestic of spectacles. It commonly occurs in summer, and in that sunny season's brightest days or loveliest nights. Often, ere all the aërial batteries are set, the sunbeams still shine on one side from an azure sky, while on the other rests a shroud of murky clouds, tinged with a melancholy light; and the lurid flash and heavy roll are announcing the coming tempest. At last, a curtain of thick mist falls over the whole

scene,

"Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail," &c.

and the majestic storm proceeds:

THOMSON.

"When thickening clouds hang threatening o'er the sky, And from their bosoms dense pale lightnings fly: