Linked with the Immortal, Immortality

Begins e'en here. For what is Time to thee,
To whose cleared sight the night is turned to day,
And that but changing life miscalled decay?

Is it not glorious then, from thine own heart
To pour a stream of life? to make a part
With thine eternal spirit, things that rot,
That, looked on for a moment, are forgot,
But to thine opening vision pass to take
New forms of life, and in new beauties wake?

To thee the falling leaf but fades to bear
Its hues and odors to some fresher air;
Some passing sound floats by to yonder sphere
That softly answers to thy listening ear.

In one eternal round they go and come,

And where they travel there hast thou a home
For thy far-reaching thoughts. O Power Divine !
Has this poor worm a spirit so like thine?

Unwrap its folds, and clear its wings to go!
Would I could quit earth, sin, and care and wo!

Nay, rather let me use the world aright,

Thus make me ready for mine upward flight.

Thoughts on the Soul-DANA,

INSTEAD of the temple of science having been reared, it were more proper to say that the temple of nature had been evolved. The archetype of science is the universe; and it is in the disclosure of its successive parts, that science advances from step to step; not properly raising any new architecture of its own, but rather unveiling by degrees an architecture as old as the creation. The laborers in philosophy create nothing, but only bring out into exhibition that which was before created. And there is a resulting harmony in their labors, however widely apart from each other they may have been prosecuted, not because they have adjusted one part to another, but because the adjustment has been already made to their hands. There comes forth, it is true, of their labors, a most magnificent harmony, yet not a harmony which they have made, but a pre-existent harmony which they have only made visible.

CHALMERS.

CHAPTER VI.

Nature as a System of Types, and an Education by Types and Analogies-The Secret of the Mysticism of Nature-Grandeur of the Science of Geography, as presented in the Manner of Arnold Guyot— The Abuses of Natural Science-The True and Heavenly Spirit and Object of Science.

Ir was a very beautiful remark of Lord Bacon, that "With regard to the sciences that contemplate Nature, the sacred philosopher declares it to be the glory of God to conceal a thing, but of the king to search it out; just as if the Divine Spirit were wont to be pleased with the innocent and gentle sport of children, who hide themselves that they may be found; and had chosen the human soul as a playmate, out of his indulgence and goodness towards man."

And it is the exercise of seeking and finding God and his glory beneath the veil suspended on the frame of universal nature, that strengthens, enlarges, and elevates the soul, and fits it, if grace be there, for the presence and enjoyment of God, when the veil is removed, and the soul in the spiritual world sees no more as through a glass darkly, but face to face. The forms of nature seem to have been designed to discipline man's mind, rather than to teach man knowledge; to educate, and not to

inform the soul, is the great object for which the mind is placed within the physical senses, and surrounded by the physical world. The forms of nature are drawn around us, not so much to fill us with knowledge, or let light into the mind, as to make us evolve it ourselves in the exercise of our own powers; they are but as the mulberry-leaf to the silk-worm which feeds upon it, indeed, but only to spin forth its beautiful fabric from itself.

upon

This beautiful creation, with all its glorious, lovely, and interesting forms, is rather to be regarded as a slate, a blackboard which God has placed before us, in order that we might draw. it those demonstrations in regard to himself, which in the very nature of our minds he has made inevitable, than as a revelation to teach or read out those demonstrations. Nature is the great diagram presented to us, and the soul rejoices to meet it, and in its study to work out and evolve the demonstration. This is God's gracious method in educating us. If he had engraved the argument upon his works in letters, it had not been. half so useful for us; there is all the difference that there is between the education of a boy in geometry by writing down the demonstration beneath the diagram, and merely setting him. to read it, and on the other hand giving him the bare diagram, and making him evolve the demonstration from his own mind.

The world also is full of types; it is an education by types and analogies. Great mountains, vast oceans, the sky and the stormy world, are types of the Infinite. The reigning constitutional ideas in the soul of man are counterparted, as it were, in the forms of nature. The constitution of our globe has been arranged for their development. As the Old Testament was a dispensation of types, foreshadowing the New and preparing for it, so this material globe and the orbed heavens round about it,