74 History of Hingham. 



animals, and he fishes from his bark canoe in the same waters 

 where are now found the boat and the rod of the white man. 



A panorama truly of wonderful scenes, such as well may stagger 

 belief in minds not accustomed to geological research, but which 

 in the main can be as satisfactorily demonstrated as any events in 

 human progress. 



If such contemplations incline us to dwell upon the insignifi- 

 cance of Man, we have only to turn our thoughts to his great 

 achievements to be astonished by their grandeur. Compared with 

 the universe of matter, he is indeed, physically, but as a grain 

 of sand, or a mote in the sunbeam, to a revolving world ; but as 

 an intellectual and conscious being, he is more than all the mate- 

 rial universe, in the great creation of God. Atom as he is on 

 the earth he inhabits, time and space alike yield to him secrets 

 unrevealed, so far as known, to other created intelligence. 



He turns over the strata of the earth as leaves of a book ; 

 reads the record of thousands and millions of years, and the his- 

 tory of the world he stands on is known to him. He directs his 

 thoughts to the distant spheres in the infinitude of space, he weighs 

 them as in a balance, he measures them, and their weight and size 

 are alike revealed to him. He even asks of them their composi- 

 tion, and lo ! they answer in letters of light on an instrument of 

 his handiwork. He studies their motions and the velocities of 

 their movements, and predicts with unerring certainty where in 

 the canopy of the heavens they will be found long after his own 

 mortal being shall have crumbled to dust. Well may he exclaim : 

 " Thou hast indeed made man but little lower than the angels. 

 Feeble and weak though he be, yet as the creature of Thy hand, 

 endowed with power to comprehend something of Thy works, by 

 no means to be despised." 



