ence; and even each individual tree excites curiosity and intense admiration. As he exnits over them, we are ready thought that was when God thought of a tree.'

We present from his writings a few paragraphs, in a condensed form.]

THE Bible is distinguished from all other early literature by its delight in natural imagery; and the dealings of God with his people are calculated peculiarly to awaken this sensibility within them. The Hebrew literature is full of expressions, not only testifying a vivid sense of the power of nature over man, but showing that sympathy with natural things themselves, as if they had human souls, which is the especial characteristic of true love of the works of God. Only consider such expressions as that tender and glorious verse in Isaiah, speaking of the cedars on the mountains as rejoicing over the fall of the king of Assyria:

"Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us.'

See what sympathy there is here, as if with the very hearts of the trees themselves. So, also, in the words of Christ, in his personification of the lilies:

"They toil not, neither do they spin." Consider such expressions as "The sea saw that, and fled." "Jordan was driven back." "The mountains skipped like rams; and the little hills like lambs."

Try to find any thing in profane writing like this. And note further that the whole book of Job appears to have been chiefly written and placed in the inspired volume in order to show the value of natural history, and its power on the human heart.

The books of the Old Testament, As distinguished from all other early writings, are thus prepared for an everlasting influence over humanity; and, inally, Christ himself, setting the concluding example to the conduct and thoughts of men, spends nearly his whole life in the fields, the mountains,

life, will not so much as sleep within the walls of Jerusalem, but rests at the little village of Bethphage, walking in the morning, and returning in the evening, through the peaceful avenues of the Mount of Olives, to and from his work of teaching in the temple.

It would thus naturally follow, both from the general tone and teaching of the Scriptures, and from the example of our Lord himself, that wherever Christianity was preached and accepted, there would be an immediate interest awakened in the works of God, as seen in the natural world.

The whole force of education, until very lately, has been directed, in every possible way, to the destruction of tho love of nature. The only knowledge which has been considered essential among us is that of words, and, the next after it, of the abstract sciences; while every liking shown by children. for simple natural history has been either violently checked, (if it took an inconvenient form for the housemaids,) or else scrupulously limited to hours. of play; so that it has really been impossible for any child earnestly to study the works of God but against its conscience; and the love of nature has become inherently the characteristic of truants and idlers. * * *

We shall find that the love of nature, wherever it has existed, has been a faithful and sacred element of human feeling; that is to say, supposing all circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two individuals, the one who loves nature most will always be found to have more faith in God than the other. Nature worship will be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power of a Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or controvert; and where that nature worship is innocently pursued, i. c., with due respect to other claims on time,

with the higher principles of religion, it becomes the channel of certain sacred truths, which can, by no other means, be conveyed.

This is not a statement which any investigation is needed to prove. It comes to us at once from the highest of all authority. The greater the number of words which are recorded in Scripture, as directly spoken to men by the lips of the Deity, are either simple revelations of his law, or special threatenings, commands, and promises relating to special events. But two passages of God's speaking, one in the Old and one in the New Testament, possess, it seems to me, a different character from any of the rest. The one was to effect the last necessary change in the mind of a man whose piety was in other respects perfect, and the other as the first statement to all men of the principles of Christianity by Christ himself. I mean the thirty-eighth to the forty-first chapters of the book of Job, and the Sermon on the Mount.

Now the first of these passages is, from beginning to end, nothing else than a direction of the mind which was to be perfected to a humble observance of the works of God in nature, and the other consists only in the inculcation of three things:

1st. Right conduct.

2d. Looking for Eternal Life.

3d. Trusting God, through watchfulness of his dealings with his creation. And the entire contents of the Book of Job and the Sermon on the Mount will be found resolvable simply into these three requirements from all men, that they should act rightly, hope for heaven, and watch God's wonders and work in the earth-the right conduct being always summed up under the three heads of justice, mercy, and truth. and no mention of any doctrinal point whatsoever occuring in either piece of divine teaching.

men, it seems to me that the simplest and most necessary truths are always the last believed; and I suppose that well-meaning people, in general, would rather regulate their conduct and creed by almost any other portion of Scripture whatsoever than by that Sermon on the Mount, which contains the things which Christ thought it first necessary for all men to understand. **

The love of nature, I believe, is precisely the most healthy element which belongs to us, and that out of it, cultivated in earnestness and as a duty, results will spring of an importance at present inconceivable; and lights arise, which, for the first time in man's history, will reveal to him the true nature of his life, the true field for his energies, and the true relations between him and his Maker. * * * * *

The delights of horse-racing and hunting, of assemblies in the night instead of the day; of costly and wearisome music; of costly and burdensome dress; of chagrined contention for place, or power, or wealth, or the eyes of the multitude; and all the endless occupa tion without purpose, and idleness without rest, of our vulgar world, are not, it seems to me, enjoyments we need be ambitious to communicate. And all real and wholesome enjoyments possible to man have been just as possible to him since first he was made of the earth as they are now; and they are possible to him chiefly in quiet. To watch the corn grow and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over the plowshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray-these are the things that make men happy; they have always had the power of doing these, they never will have power to do more. ** The time will come, I do verily be lieve, when the world will understand that God paints the clouds and shapes the moss fibers, that men may be happy

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