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It is He who measures, not only the waves of the sea, but planets and suns and systems, in the hollow of his hand. It is He who weighs the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. What is the orbit of every planet but such a balance?—so inconceivably delicate, that every hill and mountain of earth, and every leaf on the mountain side, varies its course, and leaves its own microscopic trace on the records of the universe. He who is the Wisdom of God, is present to guide every atom, in what might seem its wayward course, and the path of the mote in the sunbeam, every moment, is determined by the actual place of every dewdrop on earth, and of every star in the firmament ! If His holy presence were once withdrawn, what a fearful darkness would settle down over all creation! Chance and blind Fate would enter in, like Satan in Paradise, and creeping like a dark mist from atom to atom, from field to field of science, from planet to planet, from system to system, from the world of matter to those of feeling and thought, would soon crumble this fair universe into utter hopeless ruin, and the whole moral world, broken loose from the eye of Providence, must sink into the blackness of darkness for

ever.

We may pursue the thought still further, into a more difficult and untrodden field. In every pathway of human science, truth dispels the infant dreams of fancy, only that she may replace them, sooner or later, when the spirit has passed through a long discipline, by nobler and brighter visions of her own. Her course resembles that of the Israelites in the wilderness. birthplace of every science is in a sensual home of puerile fancies, and gigantic and monstrous superstitions, where the basest creatures are endued with imaginary

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powers, exalted into idol deities, and reverenced with an awful worship. Those who consent to follow the guidance of truth, must bid adieu to these idols, and be content to see the objects of their former worship, like the gods of Egypt, smitten in the dust. They will have to travel, often, through bare and desert regions, hungering and thirsting for discoveries which seem rarely to visit them, in a barren land of abstract science or dull experiments, where the life and soul of poetic fancy seems dried up for ever, and no rivulets nor palm trees refresh their weary eye. But let them only persevere in their journey, and they will be brought to a goodly land, more fruitful and pleasant than that of Canaan of old, where every object of earth has become enriched with mysteries of wisdom, with valleys of deepest thought, and hills of heavenly anticipation, and all nature seems like a transparent veil, to discover the higher glory of eternal things. Fancy, that seemed withered and dead, will then revive, and instead of the vast and gloomy spectres of superstition, will catch the visions of angels, and see earth itself, and all her fields of science, to be a lively shadow of the true and abiding glory.

These remarks apply, in all their force, to the science of astronomy. There was a time when the stars were thought to exercise a mysterious influence over human destinies; and the light from every planet was turned, by superstitious fancy, into gloom and thick darkness, the shadows of inexorable fate, brooding over the earth. Man was then represented like a feeble insect, struggling vainly with the force of destiny, which looked down upon him from every star, sealed his whole course, by planetary aspects, in the hour of his birth, and either raised him to greatness, or consigned

him to hopeless ruin. Science has now dispersed these dreams of astrology, though some lingering relics of their empire still remain in the East. They have sunk beneath a sound philosophy, like the idols of Egypt beneath the rod of Moses, and a dark cloud of fear and terror has been cleared away from the spirits of men.

But still the science of astronomy, in its present stage, does not satisfy the deep yearnings of the immortal spirit. It has led us out of an Egyptian bondage of dark superstitions, but we are still only in the dry and sandy wilderness of scientific abstractions, and have not entered into the goodly land of promise that is to repay the toils of the long journey. The law of attraction has been clearly detected, and fully proved, and many of its consequences traced out, with a calm and steady vision, and a strictness of reasoning, of which there was no previous example in the history of the world. But we cannot suppose that this is the only law which prevails in the universe. Already science itself, with all its caution, cannot refrain from conjectures and hopes, and seems to catch glimpses, only half understood at present, of other mysteries that are still to be explored, and which bind distant worlds, planets, and systems, into a secret union. What is the nature of that electric power, so unspeakably swift, so wonderfully powerful, so inexhaustible in its supplies, so mysterious in its perpetual latency, and so terrible and mighty when a small part of its hidden strength is aroused into full activity? What is that light which glances from the most distant stars, and reveals to science an ether, otherwise indiscoverable, that seems, in its subtilty, to border on two worlds, of matter and of mind? What unknown law determines the grouping of those vast immeasurable systems, of which every.

one includes countless worlds, and yet appears in our telescopes like a misty speck and point amidst the void firmament around it? What are the sweet influences of the Pleiades, of which patriarchs spoke dimly ages ago, and which science has still to explain? Or to descend nearer to our own world, why does the common voice of mankind, no less than the phraseology of Scripture, ascribe to the moon-beams so strange a power over the faculties of the soul, till moon-struck madness has become a proverb on the lips of all mankind? Surely we may say, after all the discoveries of astronomy, as Joshua said to the victorious Israelites"There remaineth very much land to be possessed." There are many laws, doubtless, of secret influence, which bind distant worlds together. If effluvia, which escape the minutest analysis, can spread a fatal pestilence, or convey the most delicious odours, who can tell what influence the stars of heaven may convey, though their light be so faint compared with the sunbeams, down to the dwellers upon earth! Science dare not endorse the beautiful guesses of poetic fancy; but, conscious of her own remaining ignorance, she will not venture to despise them, lest they should be prophecies of some distant truth. We cannot tell the nature of the stellar influences, whether the creatures on earth be indeed

made hereby apter to receive Perfection from the sun's more potent ray,

or whether, like the melody of sweet sounds, they may exert a more direct influence on the chords of the soul, and the secret springs of our being. Of one thing, however, we are sure, after all the discoveries of science, that we live in a world stored with all mysteries, from the stars of the sky down to the meanest

insect of earth, and that we ourselves " are but of yesterday, and know nothing." There are and must be, a thousand laws, beside the one which astronomers have discovered, in ceaseless operation among these worlds which God has made; of which fancy may have given some bright prophecies, and perhaps science itself may now be standing on the beach, and ready to launch out into this untried ocean. The undulations of light, the flashes of the lightning, the groups of distant nebulæ, the pervading ether, the strange and mysterious influence of the moon beams, the magnetic virtue of the solar rays-all seem to teach the same lesson, and wait with suspense, until the dim curtain shall be raised, and new harmonies of secret influence, and mysterious powers, on the border land of matter and mind, may dawn upon us in every field of the material universe.

Such discoveries astronomy may have in store, even now, for its ardent votaries. But whatever be the unknown treasures of wisdom in this high field of thought, they are all hidden and reserved in the bosom of the Son of God. He who opened his lips with a message of peace to the weary and heavy laden, and of comfort to the mourners, has only to speak the word, and science will unfold richer wonders than all the past to the eye of her children. Yet all her choicest gifts can never impart real happiness to one immortal soul, without the grace and blessing of the Giver. Nature, without her Lord, is only the expanse of a dreary void, an ever-widening desert, and the farther we trace her mysteries, the more desolate and lonely the heart will become. But when the Lord of all power and love is seen walking amid the trees of this spacious garden, its fields become once more like those of Paradise.

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