times convey the vessel on to its port, and sometimes hurry it into unexpected ruin. Others, again, have rested, in their course, on the surface of our satellite, and have been reflected from its barren and joyless plains, dimmed of their first lustre, to shed a sweet melancholy over the wintry forest tree, or the ruined tower; to play upon the midnight river, and perhaps to awaken, in the heart of some lonely wanderer, the deep yearnings of the spirit for a surer portion and a better home than earth can supply, and "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." The varieties, in the character and possible course, of rays, which issue at the same moment, and from the same fountain, are thus almost infinite. And when we remember, too, that every ray of solar light is composed of a vast variety of colours, and that every medium seems to have a power of election and choice, to transmit some, and retain others, the complexity appears overwhelming. We are lost in wonder at this mysterious and sublime economy, and the order that reigns, without confusion, amidst these countless 'messengers, the Divinely-commissioned letter-carriers of the whole animate and inanimate universe.

It is not, however, merely the subtlety of light, its inexhaustible supply, and the variety of its manifold changes and laws of progress, which may justly excite our admiration, and remind us what treasures of wisdom are hidden in our Lord, who presides over all these countless motions. Our wonder and awe will be increased, when we reflect on the countless applications of this sublime system, so Divinely ordained, of mutual intelligence throughout the whole universe. The eye is the great means of instruction, by which every child of man receives the knowledge of God's works, whether those of nature or of redemption. These rays, which

issue from the various fountains of natural light, seem to enrich themselves, as they travel, with all the stores of wisdom that the universe can supply, and then pour themselves into the eye of man, there to be transmuted, by a process still more wonderful, into the light of understanding and reason, the still higher and nobler gift of Him who is the true Light, and lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

How wonderful is the eye itself! How inconceivable would it be, without the help of daily experience! The Iliad, written in a nut-shell, or the substance of the earth compressed to the size of an orange, are as nothing by the side of this daily seen, and daily neglected prodigy. For here the whole universe, with its stars and planets, and countless wonders, is compressed into a mere point, that it may pour all the treasures of knowledge it contains into the mind of a little child. It is a perpetual parable to us of the Divine condescension, where heaven, in all its vastness and glory, is seen contracting itself to meet the littleness of earth. To a lively fancy, it seems like a sentry, posted on the border ground, on the very frontier of the two worlds of mind and matter, to convey the message to all the lower creatures, of Man's decreed supremacy, and to instruct the immortal spirit respecting all that passes in the rival territory; and thus to furnish it with means for recovering its own forfeited and lost dominion over the works of God. What varieties are due even to the outward position alone of every observer! Every eye sees a different rainbow. Every point of sight implies a different landscape, and a system of rays, entirely distinct from the others, are needed to make that new landscape visible. Look with us at that clear lake rippling in the bright sunshine. Even while you look, not one beam

of light is the same. The waves, which are bright to one observer, are dark to another. As the sun rises on us when he sets to the opposite hemisphere, so the ripple that is fading here into darkness, to the eye of another observer at our side, is beginning, that very moment, to laugh with brightness. A separate system of rays is needed for every separate eye, to kindle the countenance of the same friend into life and animation; while another system, at the same instant, may be applied by the skill of art to give permanence to the fleeting image, and to awaken the affectionate memories of loving hearts in far distant lands. When once we reflect calmly on this Divine economy, our thoughts are overwhelmed and lost in the immense variety that prevails in every part, and we learn to veil our faces, while we adore in silence at the footstool of the Most High..

And when we think of the moral results which flow, in ten thousand different minds, from the reports of these swift and winged messengers, our wonder and our admiration may well increase. Our conceptions must rise higher and higher of the fulness of wisdom stored in His infinite mind, who sustains the laws of light, as well as the whole system of Providence, by the word of His power. One sunbeam may now be lighting up the late-found planet, or returning from it to enrich the astronomer with a fuller and clearer knowledge of its distance and various motions. Another, which started in the same hour, may now be resting on the primer of some village child, taught in the Sabbath school to read of His love, without whom there was not anything made that is made, but who was made flesh, and dwelt among us, the Saviour of sinners, and took the little children in His arms, and blessed them. One ray may be lighting up some page of sin and folly, where vain

men have perverted the very works of God himself into arguments for blaspheming His word, and despising His grace. Another, issuing lately from the same fountain of light, and controlled by the same laws, may now guide the eye of the Christian sufferer, on the bed of sickness and disease, to those words of peace and comfort—“ Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." Here the bright sunbeams, reflected from some glorious landscape, may be kindling to rapture the soul of the youthful artist, as he gazes upon its varying light and shade, and rich colouring, with all the refined enthusiasm of art. There, amidst some scene of mirth and festive folly, the light from lamps and blazing cressets may minister to the delirium of youthful vanity, and shed its deceitful lustre over the pleasures of sin; while the young and the beautiful, the votaries of worldly amusement and folly, see their own countenances reflected in the mirrors of luxurious pride. And elsewhere, it may be a scene of quiet moonlight, where some child of God is gone forth, like Isaac, to meditate at eventide; and, in this world of shadows, to catch some dim earnests of the good things to come, or purify his spirit from the cares and passions of earth, while he thinks of that covenant of mercy of which it is written"It shall stand fast for ever as the moon, and as the faithful witness in heaven." Such might have been, and such perhaps were the thoughts, of the Jewish exiles by the waters of Babylon, while they dwelt on their own sorrows, and longed for the promised deliver

ance.

"The moonlight, resting on that awful river,
Woke memories of past ages, far away

In time's remotest depths, and, shifting ever,
O'er deeper spirit-fountains seemed to play.

Here once were Eden's bowers! here loved to stray
Bright angel-guards by old Euphrates' stream,

While oft to midnight skies their solemn lay,

Songs, such as Paradise might well beseem,

Rose, like the music wild of strange, unearthly dream."

How innumerable, indeed, are these mental changes, of which the rays of light are the source in their perpetual journey, whether reflected from the landscapes of nature or the mirrors of art, from the records of human knowledge and learning, or directly from eye to eye, and from countenance to countenance! With what deep feeling and exquisite beauty has our great poet described the many sources of pleasure which sight can impart to others, but of which his blindness had deprived him.

"Thus with the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with an universal blank

Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,

And knowledge at one entrance quite shut out.”

But this leads us to consider a farther aspect of the treasures of Divine wisdom in our blessed Lord. Natural light is wonderful in its nature and its discovered laws, in the variety of its sources, the rapidity of its course, its innumerable changes, and the countless effects, physical, intellectual, and moral, to which it ministers, as it mingles with all the other works of God, and most of all, when it visits and enlightens the eye of man. But there is a still nobler image of thought to which the subject invites us. There is a 66 celestial light" higher and more glorious than the sunbeams, or the wide, immeasurable ether that science reveals; a light which can plant eyes within us, and irradi