ee ee 
POS 
ADDRESS. xlv 
He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. 
Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless 
power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which 
we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the 
more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splen- 
dour; and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to 
the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical know- 
ledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point 
out to you.a few examples. What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of 
His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless 
abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone 
gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of 
forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace 
in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than 
men. [If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, 
how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like 
it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we 
inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our 
system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be 
overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge 
of infinity, i¢ brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twi- 
light of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the 
most finished perfection,—that the most marvellous contrivances minister to 
their preservation and their enjoyment,—that as nothing is too vast for the 
Creator’s control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every 
turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man’s Creator is also his 
Father,—things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his 
happiness: but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very 
district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from 
other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it 
might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them? 
That it should be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being 
welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, 
—and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be 
the most abundant of all,—must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And 
not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coal- 
fields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances 
which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till 
He had placed on. earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period 
of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their 
