arid fome other Vh^nomena if the Atmofphere. £f>i 



ages, with grateful admiration; but, not being an objecl of 

 fight, has been ranked among the inexplicable works, of 

 Deity. The. clouds diipenung refrefhing (bowers of rain on 

 the ary and thirty ground; the flow of rivers, with their 

 long train of beneficial confequences, could hardly efcapc 

 the notice of any thinking being in every age of the world. 

 We accord, ngl\ find the iupplv of water frequently mentioned 

 in the oldest book we have, among the mod wonderful 

 as well as valuable of [leaven's bleflings. 



" Seeing the earth annually covered with a rich and beau- 

 tiful carpet of vegetables, and thefe aftonifhingly variegated, 

 and gradually developing 'from feed-time to harveft-time,* 

 mult have led thofe of ancient days to recognize the proxi- 

 mate caufes, the warmth of the fun, and the moifture from 

 the clouds ; and thefe again to an acquaintance. with that per- 

 petual circulation fubfifhng between the ocean and the moun- 

 tains, through the inftrumentality of the atmofphere, and 

 by the medium of rivers to the ocean again. But the philo- 

 sophy or explanation of this vivifying phenomenon is fpokea 

 of as inimitable and paft finding out. They did then, as we 

 do now, carry our inveftigations as high as we can, as in the 

 cafe of gravitation, and beyond that principle fey, with them, 

 .< it is the hand of God ;' an expreffion denoting the laft term 

 of our analytical refults. Unable to inveftigate the effence 

 of light and of fire, the Deity was called by the name of 

 thefe inexplicable agents. 



" In thofe early days, when the knowledge of nature was 

 confined to narrow limits, they, like our Indians, ' 



' Saw God in clouds, and heard him in the \vin<ls.' 



Hence thev ftyled the Deity c the father of the rain/ andre- 

 prelented him as c calling forth the waters of the fea, and 

 pouring them down according to the vapour ' thereof/ 

 Whence we infer, they believed the water rofe in the form 

 of vapour from the ocean, and that it became frejhened in its 

 pafiage through the air; and it moreover appears that they 

 were fejifible .that, this procefs was regularly and perpetually 

 performing; for they remarked that * although all the rivers 

 run into the fca, yet was the fea not full ; unto the place 

 whence the rivers come, thither they return again/ They 

 feem alio to have known that mountains made a part of 

 this grand apparatus, and to have believed that it was 

 not a fortuitous or random procefs, but regulated, as we now 

 find it, by weight and meafure. May not this be inferred 

 from that fublime queftion of Ifaiah — * Who hath meafured 



tlid. 



