Thought of God. 217 



miring view. He presents the gleaming ore, and 

 says : " Here I found it, where it was poured in all 

 its purity by God himself." 



We have now laid open broad veins in this rich 

 mine, by centuries of patient search ; but it was the 

 particles of the same true ore, the thought of God, 

 that led on the early searchers, though they found 

 it in grains so small and scattered while walking 

 upon the edge of the placer that the multitude could 

 Bee nothing. Hut as the miner neither the 



gold which he finds, nor the gold fashions the 

 that discovers it, so the mind of man neither creates 

 the order and harmony which he discovers in nat 

 nor did the order and harmony originate the mind 

 which discovers them. They are both the work of 

 the same Almighty Creator who formed man in His 

 own image, so that he should ever delight to revel 

 among the works which the Infinite Intellect pro- 

 nounced very good in the beginning. 



The great minds of the world have walked with 

 Nature as the scholar walks with the great master, 

 listening as he unfolds his thoughts and defe- 

 rentially propounding questions in every case of 

 doubt. It was because in nature there was thought 

 embodied ; a constant unfolding of a plan drawn 

 by Infinite Wisdom, and written out on every star 

 and mountain, in all the tribes of land and water, 

 in the expanding flower and glittering grain of sand 

 that they never tired of her communings, never 

 grew wiser than their teacher, but felt themselves 

 to be children to the last. We have but like them 



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