SCIENCE is the rival of imagination, and by teaching that these stars are suns, has given a new interest to the anticipations of eternity, which can supply such inexhaustible materials of intelligence and wonder. Yet these stars seem to confess that there must be still sublimer regions for the reception of spirits, refined beyond the intercourse of all material lights; and even leave us to imagine that the whole material universe itself is only a place where beings are appointed to originate, and to be educated through successive scenes, till, passing over its utmost bounds to the immensity beyond, they there at length find themselves in the immediate presence of the Divinity.

JOHN FOSTER.

CHAPTER IV.

Arrangement of the Works of Nature for Man's Education and Discipline-Spiritual Intuitions and Impulses in the Constitution of the Human Mind-Human Intuition compared with Animal InstinctInfluence and Effect of Procrastination.

In the book of Ecclesiastes a very peculiar passage comes to view, which we are inclined to refer to the sacred lessons which God has written or illustrated for us in the natural world. "He hath made everything beautiful in his time; also, he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh, from the beginning to the end." No man can behold the face of nature in the lovely month in which I am now writing, and not feel the force and beauty of the opening expression in this passage. God hath indeed made everything beautiful in his time. In its proper season, and in its relations with man and the system of creation, Winter is beautiful, the Spring is beautiful, Summer is beautiful, and the Autumn is beautiful; and every circling month, be it participant of the qualities of November or of June, is beautiful in its time.

Moreover, God has connected moral lessons with all the changes 'he seasons, all the laws that regulate our globe, all the fix

henomena, and scenery of our earthly abode. The world

is God's cradle and nursery for a race of intelligent beings. He has made all its arrangements with reference to the development of our faculties, and the education of our minds and hearts. There is a counterpart in our moral being and destiny to the system of nature, by which we are surrounded. Nature looks into the heart, as into a mirror, and finds a reflection there; and the heart, as a self-conscious mirror, receives the reflection of nature into its depths, and reveals those spiritual lives, which, without the reflecting heart, are never visible to sense.

The system of nature is so arranged, that we may draw analysis and instructive lessons from it, or suggestions, in regard even to our eternal destiny; while in the study of God's works, by which we are surrounded, we have some of the noblest and most perfect means, both of moral and mental discipline. Thus God hath set the world in our hearts; in our own moral frame and destiny we have the purposes for which the world was framed, and the meanings which it was intended to sustain and illustrate; and which, as connected with our responsibilities and destinies for eternity, are so vast, so boundless, and the phenomena and laws of the physical globe are at the same time in themselves so wonderful and infinitely varied, that indeed on both accounts, on account both of the letter and the spirit, the frame-work and the lesson, it is impossible for any man to find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever; it hath a glorious, everlasting meaning; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it; and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.

We have perhaps in this announcement the great reason why the forms of nature, her grand and varied aspects of sublimity

and beauty, the sunrise and the sunset, the sky by day, and this glorious light around us, night and the stars, the fountains, brooks, and rivers, the forests and the flowers, the cloud-capped mountain, the verdant plain, and the sublime and solemn ocean; why all these phenomena and forms, whether in storm or calm, exert so powerful an influence over the sensitive mind, and are to all our race objects of contemplation so full of interest and delight. It is not merely because the sense or requirement of sublimity and beauty in our intellectual constitution finds the elements of nourishment and satisfaction in these objects; but because we are moral beings, because this world, these forms, this natural life and light were intended to promote and sustain our education for God and a higher spiritual existence, and because God has made everything, if rightly viewed, full of a divine, celestial meaning. Here, too, is the great ground of obligation for the study of God's works, the study of them in a spiritual and religious light, the observance and application of their religious meanings, and not merely for artificial and economie purposes.

The soul of man His face designed to see,
Who gave these wonders to be seen by man,
Has here a previous scene of objects great,
On which to dwell; to stretch to that expanse
Of thought, to rise to that exalted height

Of admiration, to contract that awe,
And give her whole capacities that strength,
Which best may qualify for final joy.

The more our spirits are enlarged on earth,

The deeper draught they shall receive of Heaven.

YOUNS.

This being the object and design of Nature, her forms are invested with a deeper meaning than can be seen at a glance, and God has certainly given to Nature a power over the mind, which, though in many respects plain and intelligible, is sometimes, and in some things quite inscrutable. "I want to extract and absorb into my soul," remarked John Foster on one occasion, "the sublime mysticism that pervades all nature, but I cannot. I look on all the vast scene as I should on a column sculptured with ancient hieroglyphics, saying, There is significance there, but despairing to read. At every time, it is as if I met a ghost of solemn, mysterious, and indefinable aspect, but while I attempt to arrest it, to ask it the veiled secrets of the world, it vanishes." This makes us recur to the passage of Scripture before quoted, that no man can find out the work that God maketh, from the beginning to the end.

We are to remember that the same being made the world, who by himself carries on and executes the plan of its redemption. Can there, then, be the least doubt, that in the prearrangement of that plan, the world itself, which was to be its theatre, was created and arranged as it is, with special reference to the accomplishment of the purpose for which it was spoken into existence? All the laws and changes of this habitable globe are but as the loom, into which God puts the web of his providence, to be unrolled. The stuff is immortality. Redemption takes it up, gives it form and coloring for eternity; and when the work is done, the loom itself, grand, and costly, and glorious as its frame may seem to us, will be laid aside, as having subserved its mighty end; will give place to some manifestation of the Divine Wisdom, some shadowing forth of the