SCIENTIFIC TRACTS. 



NUMBER IX. 



THE WEATHER. 



THE eye, as Christian philosophers have often shown, 

 is an optical instrument, contrived for its purpose with 

 wonderful dexterity. The whole human system is a 

 highly artificial machine, filled with evidences of inven- 

 tive skill : and the whole animal and vegetable creation is 

 crowded with the most consummate proofs of contrivance, 

 mechanical and chemical, for adapting means to ends, 

 and for accomplishing those benevolent purposes which 

 the Creator has in view. 



There is not, however, in the whole range of human 

 observation, any case in which this benevolent design, 

 and this unrivalled skill in the selection of means to 

 promote it, is more striking than in that arrangement in 

 the constitution of nature, which produces those phe- 

 nomena, to which, as a class, we give the appellation of 

 THE WEATHER. These proofs are not at once so evident; 

 and when we examine th^m.we find them so unlike any 

 human contrivances that wq do not so easily appreciate 

 fBem. The telescope imitates the eye ; the automaton, 

 made by the highest effort of human skill, gives us a 

 faint resemblance of muscular motions : and in many 

 other cases where human ingenuity has imitated the 

 Creator's works, we can more easily see the power and 

 wisdom displayed in the original, because we can appre- 

 ciate the efforts made to produce the copy. But in 

 regard to those phenomena which are now our subject, 

 the Creator's work stands uncopied and alone. There 

 is no human imitation of the whirlwind and the storm. 

 There is no power or skill among us which can guide the 

 lightning or arouse the tornado. Hence we have nothing 

 to rest upon in endeavoring to ascend to proper concep- 



YOL. I. NO. IX. 19 



