PEELUDE OF QUOTATIONS. 



There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not 

 confound the most enlarged understanding. . . . The workman- 

 ship of the all wise and powerful God, in the great fabric of the 

 universe and every part thereof, farther exceeds the capacity 

 and comprehension of the most inquisitive and intelligent man, 

 than the best contrivance of the most ingenious man doth the 

 conceptions of the most ignorant of rational creatures. JOHN 

 LOCKE. 



When I look at the poor little herbs that arise out of the 

 earth, the lowest of vegetables, and consider the secret spark of 

 life that is in them, that attracts, increases, grows, and 

 seminates itself and its kinds, the various virtues that are in 

 them for the food, medicine, and delight of more perfect 

 creatures, my mind is carried up to the admiration and adora- 

 tion and praise of that God whose wisdom and power and 

 influence and government is seen in these small footsteps of his 

 goodness : so that, take all the wisest, ablest, and most powerful 

 and knowing men under heaven, they cannot equal that poiver 

 and wisdom of his that is seen in a blade of grass. SIB M. 

 HALE. 



We may safely affirm of all those multiform tribes ivhich 

 have been animated by God, that they exhibit, without a single 

 exception, the very nicest adaptation of means to an end, and 

 that the greatest and least are equally proofs that it is a 

 principle with the Creator to make nothing in vain. You 

 cannot say that what is merely ornamental answers no'purpose. 

 Not in vain hath God clothed with beauty or gifted with 

 melody ', " the folds which sing among the branches" Not in 

 vain hath he painted the foliage and pencilled the flowers with 

 which the earth is bedecked. Not in vain hath he given 



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