long and unaccountable delay. They might say, perhaps, in their zealous desire for the good things to come -Lord, these plains are still desolate and unpeopled, these hills are bare and uninhabited, these future homes of life and beauty are still covered with a dark abyss of waters! How long shall our eyes wait in vain for the consummation? How long, ere the habitable parts of the earth are peopled at length with the sons of men? Cut short, by thy Divine and wonder-working power, these slow processes of nature, these years of long and interminable change. But their Lord might answer, as he answered His mother on earth-What have I, the All-wise, to do with the weak impatience of the creature? the hour is not yet come. He who inhabiteth eternity, can have no need, like the creatures of a day, to precipitate His counsels. There is an infinite calmness and patience, in every step of His holy Providence. "I the Lord will hasten it, in its time," is the inscription on every page of His mysterious decrees; and our dim fancies, in this life, may soon deceive us, when we speculate on the times and seasons which appear fitting to Him, in whose sight a thousand years are only as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night visions.

Let us once realize the facts of Geology, in the light of this inspired description of our Lord, and what treasures of unknown love and wisdom they will reveal! The storm that was stilled on the sea of Tiberias may remind us of darker and more furious whirlwinds, which the same Lord had stilled already, in their wildest uproar, when the Spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters, and preparing the earth for its destined inhabitants. Every hill that is now clad with vines, and every valley that laughs with the corn-fields,

bears the signs in its bosom of long ages, wherein it was preparing, under the watchful eye of the Son of God, to feast the eye and rejoice the heart of his children in these latter days. The whole history of the human race, for thousands of years, has been moulded in every part by the geography of the earth. But that geography is itself the final result of ten thousand physical changes, the effect of which neither man nor angel could have possibly foreseen. Who can fix the date of those mighty forests, or who describe the state of the earth's surface at the time of their luxuriant growth, which have since, by many and mighty changes, become the main spring in our land of all human arts, and the source of daily comforts and fireside enjoyments without number to countless families of the people of God! Yet, even when they grew in all their unknown luxuriance, in a world still peopled only by the monsters of the deep, His thoughts of love were rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and his delights were with the children of men. He foresaw the issue, in remotest ages, of every process in the magnificent laboratory, and our daily comforts, by the winter fireside, bear a silent witness, to careless and ungrateful hearts, of long, long ages of forgotten and neglected love. It is a maxim as universal in its range, as glorious in its own nature, which the Apostle announces to us. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, and are called according to His purpose. We may carry it back, like a torch of heavenly light, into all those dark and mysterious ages which science dimly reveals. Even in those embryo stages of our earth's history, all things were, under the eye of the predestined Saviour, working together for the good of His redeemed. A coming eternity will be needful to disclose all the

issues and fruits of His boundless love; but all those seeds of light and glory which will blossom for ever, were sown in secret, by this Divine Husbandman, in those long ages of remote and mysterious darkness.

Let us learn, then, as Christians, to read all the discoveries of modern science, reflected in this bright mirror of the Saviour's love. Let us think of the Word who was in the beginning with God, whenever we meditate on these early wonders and mysteries of creation. Our earth, from its surface to its very centre, on its hills and valleys, its broken strata, its mountain ranges, its oceans and rivers and inland seas, is sown thickly, in every part, with those thoughts of Divine wisdom and grace which have rested on it for long ages before the birth-day of mankind. It is not at Nazareth and Bethlehem alone, on the mount of Tabor, or the shores of Tiberias, that a believing eye can trace the footsteps of the Lord of glory. We may see them by the shores of every ocean which He has reduced now within its appointed bounds, and in every mountain range which He has guided with His mighty power to its appointed home, to be an emblem of lofty hearts, still bound to earth, yet reaching upward toward heaven. Every fossil may become, to an intelligent and thoughtful heart, a new sacrament of His mercy; and the fire that cheers our hearths may carry our thoughts backward, till they lose themselves in the height and depth and length and breadth of His Divine love, that passeth knowledge. A science which might appear in itself, like the chaos it aims to explore, dreary, dark and tumultuous, and perhaps even hostile and threatening to Divine truth

Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
And raging waves, as mountains, to assault
Heaven's height.

His

may thus become a nursery of all deep reverence and holy gratitude, and fill our minds with a profound adoration for the ways and works of the Most High. ways are indeed in the sea, and His path in the great waters, where science herself soon loses all sure footing-and His footsteps are not known, while His counsels travel on, through long ages of darkness, and a long eternity of light and glory still to come. But of this the believer may be assured, that all the discoveries of science will only, soon or late, pay tribute to the glory of Emmanuel, and that He who rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth, delighting in the sons of men, will, even now, in these last days of the Church, take pleasure in His people, and will shortly beautify the meek with everlasting glory in the new creation of God.

T. R. B.

THE SPIRIT OF NATURE.-No. II.

DARKNESS enshrouds the still and silent earth. Creation sleeps. A faint beam of orient light breaks upon the verge of the distant horizon. It renders visible the paleness of night lying upon the hueless meadows, and dark, shadowy trees. The still image of death enwraps all animals in unconsciousness and repose.

Brighter and brighter dawns the beam of morning; crimson and golden rays overspread the sky, and contend with each other in varying brilliancy. From the kindling sky descends the awakening impulse, the sea sparkles, the freshened breeze becomes instinct with life. In wider and yet diverging circles, the blessed light sheds its benign influence. The feathery foliage deepens into living green, and quivers in the glittering sunshine. The birds lift up their voices rejoicingly to greet the new-born day. Man re-awakes, to add the majesty of intellect to the universal hymn of nature.

O glorious orb, whose presence produces light, music, and gladness, in whose absence vegetation would wither,