Audubon’s Ornithology, First Volume. 347 
The study of nature is but the study of the works of the Al- 
ighty. We see in every portion, whether the animalcule, or 
. ttiastodon, the products of His all-directing hand. We trace 
in every atom that goes to make up the whole, the undeniable 
evidence of his inscrutable wisdom. No wonder, therefore, that 
all who ever opened the book of nature, with a proper spirit, 
never failed to turn from its contemplation with a more devout 
and reverential acknowledgment of their Author’s infinite wis- 
om, goodness, and power. No wonder, therefore, that the natu- 
ralist is seldom or never other than most seriously impressed with 
religious and devotional feelings. It is no wonder, limited as are 
the number of those whose labors in the cause of natural history 
have rendered them conspicuous, so large a proportion should 
have been preéminent for their piety,—that the Willoughbys and ~ 
the Rays, the Linneeuses and the Cuviers, and a host of others, 
should have been as bright examples in the walks of private life, as 
they have since a celebrated for their writings. No wonder 
that we are constantly meeting in their productions, a pure spirit 
of religious belief breathing in all their writings, or bursts of 
lofty praise and enthusiastic admiration of Nature’s God, breaking 
forth and irradiating all they ever wrote. The cold and h 
critical materialism which marked a certain school of French nat- 
uralists in the days of their revolution, forms no real exception to 
this rule. Their land was at the time overflowing with atheism 
and infidelity. They bowed in weakness before the current of 
popular frenzy, and in insincere attempts to palliate their unbelief 
impiously attempted to pervert the book of nature, and to 
Take it support their absurdities. But this very effort was of 
itself the means of defeating the end they had in view, and the 
unwieldy bubble burst under the pressure of truth. ‘The fabric 
of French infidelity tottered and fell under the efforts of the phi- 
losophers to sustain it, and through the very weight of that which 
they vainly supposed would give to it symmetry and strength. 
Their wild conclusions disgusted by their absurdity all whom 
their impiety had failed towshock, and Christianity triumphed by 
means of the very blows that were designed for its destruction. 
It is therefore impossible to come to any other conclusion than 
that the study of natural history must have a necessary and in- 
evitable tendency to impress the mind with the truth of religion, 
and thereby to improve as well as regulate the moral feelings. 
