3 



bounded by our relation to Him simply as His creatures. We 

 cannot have come into being without parents and other family 

 relations ; we cannot give free scope to our affections, nor 

 develope our intellect, nor act adequately, nor secure full bodily 

 enjoyment, but as we form part of a community, the various 

 members of which contribute to our improvement. And, as 

 communal life is not a separable accident of humanity, but a 

 necessity of our nature, we are bound to answer to its Author for 

 the general good, so far as it is in our power to promote it. 

 And it further follows that, as we are communal by the very 

 constitution of our nature, we can by no means relieve our- 

 selves of these obligations to our Author to live natural, that 

 is, communal lives, lives in which we shall seek, not our own 

 good only, but the good of others also. 



We are placed, not have placed ourselves, in this world, 

 and in this vast and wonderful universe, which we have not 

 made, which we cannot modify, not one of whose properties 

 we can change, and to which we cannot add an atom. But 

 we derive all our support from it, both as to body and intellect. 

 Not only are its material resources unlimited, so that, by its 

 orderly alternations, food, clothing, and every other requisite 

 for happy and full physical life are furnished, generation after 

 generation, but its structure and combination are so various, 

 and multiform, and recondite, that it is capable of revealing 

 to us, with continually-increasing clearness and breadth, the 

 mode by which its great Author works. Thus it brings our 

 intellect into contact with His, and teaches us the same order 

 and breadth of thought as that which by a supreme volition 

 has produced all things. 



We know that the most exquisite skill of the mechanic is 

 only a faithful copy of the order of the world itself, in the 

 application of material properties in a material substance. 

 All pure science is but a knowledge and application of the 

 properties of number and space in their multiform combina- 

 tions and relations. The deductions of the chemist are but 

 the discovery of some of the secret processes of Nature, or 

 rather of its great Author in His material operation j while 

 the artist, in his most noble and original creations, is simply 

 using the material which the Creator has provided after His 

 Own method. Thus, the world is not only our habitation, but 

 our school and our storehouse. Without it our body would 

 die and our mind become inert. 



But we are not only dependent on the great Author of all 

 for the production and furnishing of this world, but also for 

 the constant operation by which its forces are maintained, its 

 substance renewed, and its life preserved ; for each of these 



