374 Linnean Society. 



thousands have been enriched, and from which millions have successively 

 derived comfort. But I contend for a much higher benefit accruing from 

 the mere contemphition of nature, constantly augmented by every accession 

 to the stock of knowledge, and, as I beheve and trust, capable of continual 

 advancement from generation to generation to the end of time, and of 

 yielding delight through all eternity. We are conscious of great delight 

 from cheerful and enlightened conversation. The observations and the 

 lectures of learned men send us away full of pleasing thoughts, which divert 

 our minds from ordinary anxieties. We well know that the society in which 

 men and women are conversant influences their manners ; that books make 

 full men ; discussion, acute men ; exertion, strong and active men. If we 

 are thus strengthened, thus polished, thus improved, what must we be if our 

 conversation be not only with the wise but with wisdom itself? not only 

 with the graceful and the glorious among men, but with the Author of all 

 beauty and glory. Knowledge amasses facts, science arranges them. But 

 what does science effect? Has it in itself any arranging and disposing 

 power ? Surely none. It can only observe, and compare, and trace out, 

 and announce the observed harmonies, connections, ties, and nice depend- 

 encies, the diversities and analogies which the great Ordainer has placed 

 before the view of attentive intelligence. These are the backward traces 

 which show where God has passed. He said to Moses, " Thou shalt see 

 behind me, for man cannot view my face and live." Are we not elevated, are 

 we not enraptured, when we see the great works of Greek and Roman artists? 

 of Phidias, of Michael Angelo, of Raphael, of Corregio, of Wren and Rey- 

 nolds, of ship-builders and machinists ? Yet how mean are their imitations 

 of the mere exterior of scant)*.portions of God's works ! how utterly in- 

 adequate to enter into the slightest competition with the least atom of 

 reality ! Yet we cultivate a taste for human arts as a source of our highest 

 enjoyments ; and what we so seek, we do not fail to find. What, then, 

 ought we not to expect to discover as the result, to expect as the concomi- 

 tant, of a continual, an attentive, a devoted study of the harmonies of God*s 

 creation, — of his great book of primary and perpetual manifestation, 

 stamped by his own impress, displaying universally his undecaying auto- 

 graph? Some, indeed, have weakly supposed that this assertion of natural 

 theology militates against the Mosaic and Christian revelation"; but I appeal to 

 the hearts and heads of all sincere lovers of the beauties and glories of God's 

 works, whether they ever feel more fervently all the good emotions which 

 the bible is uniformly directed to excite and to purify, than when they con- 

 template the evidence of its fundamental truths in the first great work of 

 the common Author of creation and of revelation. In the latter, how fre- 

 quent and how beautiful are the appeals to the former ! " The invisible 

 things,'* says Saint Paul, " are clearly seen, being understood by the things 

 that are made ; even the eternal power and Godhead." What, then, are the 

 emotions of which every ardent naturalist, by the very constitution of his 

 body and soul, of all his instincts and all his improved faculties, is inevit- 

 ably conscious ? The first emotions, even in childhood, are those of love and 

 wonder : these expand with our growth, and are strengthened with our 

 strength. A conviction that all beings, especially those which, by nature or 

 instinct, we find to have the most powerful connection with the best, the 

 dearest, the most ennobling of our sympathies, are the productions, the 

 children, of a common, mighty, and inexpressibly beneficent Parent, must 

 necessarily impress all whose hearts glow with such heart-exalting heart- 

 purifying conviction with charity, even such as Christ inculcated, one 

 towards another; with peacefulness, with rapture, with devotion to all things 

 that are of God, that manifest him first, him midst, him last, and without 

 end, the omniscient, the omnipotent, the omnipresent. The rapture of the 

 naturalist is accordant with the emotion of Eve, who says to the instant 

 source of her joy, 



