influence of nature is so powerful, so elevating, so suggestive, and at times so mysterious, therefore there must be such a thing as a soul or thinking principle in nature, apart from God, with which the human soul communes. Here is a bridge, across which a careless irreligious mind might easily pass, from the natural effect of the creation, into the gloomy gulf of atheism, or the wilderness of a pantheistic unbelief.

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There is no meaning in nature, but that which God gives, that which God teaches. The forms of nature are indeed beautiful in themselves, yet are they no more than as the silvery wick, along which the burning oil throws its light into the atmosphere, or as the strings, from which the hand of the musician draws forth melody. Both intellectually and spiritually, as exciting the mind, and leading it to God, the powerful influence of nature has been experienced by multitudes, advancing as far as the heart advances, stopping where the heart stops. Intent and devout observers do really find in nature, according to the language of Foster, a scene marked all over with mystical figures, the points and traces, as it were, of the frequentation and agency of superior spirits. They find it sometimes concentrating their faculties to curious and minute inspection, sometimes dilating them to the expansion of vast and magnificent forms; sometimes beguiling them out of all precise recognition. of material realities, whether small or great, into visionary musings; and habitually and in all ways conveying into the mind trains and masses of ideas, of an order not to be acquired in the schools, and exerting a modifying and assimilating influence on the whole mental economy."

Now our acquaintance with this philosophy and influence of nature must depend upon our knowledge of ourselves and God;

for we have these three terms of knowledge-nature, ourselves, and God; and ourselves being but a part of nature, we can know nothing truly of the system of nature, but as we know God; nothing better or more truly, than as the inhabitants of Plato's Cave. Habits of meditation on the depths of our own being, and the attributes of God, to whom we are related, are requisite for those, who would read aright the lines and lessons of creation. The effulgence of sunset, in an evening of extraor dinary splendor and beauty, may seem something, if it would stay, sufficient, by a power of its own, by the inherent abiding of some soul-like element, to detain and occupy the mind; but as an unconnected spectacle, unrelated to something infinitely higher and more glorious, even its divine, intelligent Architect and Cause, its power would speedily cease. We see in it, not so much what is, as what can be, and what God is, of whose light inaccessible and full of glory, this transcendent vision is but the permeable curtain, adapted to the possibility of man's gaze. Moreover,

The silent spectacle, the gleam,

The shadow, and the peace supreme,

are but a language, to move the soul, if it is not prepared for such influences, to a transport, a love, and an enjoyment as participant of heaven in its spirit, as these glorious, effulgent forms and colors are typical or representative of heaven in its beauty and glory. Therefore, truly has the poet, and in a right heavenly faith, in the admiration of this scene, exclaimed,

Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve!

But long as godlike wish or hope divine
Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe

That this magnificence is wholly thine!
From worlds not quickened by the Sun

A portion of the gift is won;

An intermingling of Heaven's pomp is spread

On ground which British shepherds tread!

WORDSWORTH,

Now when from such meditations on the Divine Being and the place of his abode, and upon the wonderful and fearful structure and responsibilities of our own being, and upon the things unseen and eternal, we come to the investigation of nature, we hear a thousand harmonies, to which otherwise the ear had been insensible, we behold a thousand depths of significance, which otherwise the mind had passed carelessly by. Habituated to voyages of faith, every spiritual sense is quickened; we return to the objects of the land with the distant vision of the sea; we may gradually attain, from heaven and earth, to something of prophetic strain,

"And from the solitude

Of the vast ocean bring a watchful heart,

And an eye practised like a blind man's touch,"

commencing with presences and meanings, of which a careless. mind knows nothing.

Without such discipline of faith in things unseen and eternal; without such sense of God, and meditation on worlds not quickened by the sun; without such thought upon realities, which men can but think upon, while angels see; without such remembrance of our immortality and personal responsibility to God, our birth, indeed, is but a sleep and a forgetting, and though heaven lies about us from infancy to manhood, yet the low intercepting

clouds hang heavily and damp around the soul; a blank, opaque humor, a drear, dark cataract, passes over the eye. Nothing but what the touch can handle, is seen through the vision; an oppressive vapor of materialism settles upon thought,

"And custom lies upon us with a weight

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."

Every day we go further from the East, further from the Cherubim, further from the guiding Shechinah, further from the light of Paradise, and the types of heaven. Deeper in the vales of earth we go, and earlier falls the sunset, and the splendor of the celestial vision is diminishing, and the light and reality of the supernatural are forgotten or hidden in the natural.

"At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day."

There may be worshippers of nature, who are not worshippers of God; but there is no true natural religion, without a devout heart towards God, a heart renewed by grace. Nor are the influences of nature such as can ever supply the work of grace, or approximate to it. The poet Wordsworth expresses the wish to have his days bound each to each by natural piety, an unaffected love of nature such as when the child's heart first leaped up at sight of the rainbow. And pleasant would this be, preserved, as in Wordsworth's own soul, even into old age. But if that were all, though the stream of such piety might be sweetly serene and poetical, yet it could never be truly religious; it might leave the heart wholly unchanged, never rising above nature, and in nothing participant of God. For no man cometh

the Father by nature only, nor except through Christ; and

he who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in all genuine piety, is the Master of all this world of loveliness, these forms of sublimity and beauty, which in nature address themselves to the mind through the senses.

In the exquisite poem on Tintern Abbey, we are presented with one of the loftiest and most serenely beautiful descriptions of the physical and intellectual effect of nature on the character, without any definite reference to the Author of Nature. The Poet speaks of the sensations in heart and mind produced by natural forms of beauty, and passing as elements of existence into his being. He describes another gift of aspect more sublime:

That blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened;-that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

Passing over the emotions of youth, when the sounding cataract haunted him like a passion, and the deep and gloomy woods, mountains, and rocks, with their colors and forms, were the food of an appetite, and entering upon another and later period of life, the poet gives the mood of his riper and deeper