312 WALKS AND TALKS. 



Do not say the doctrine displaces the doctrine of divine 

 creation ; for it proclaims creation a perpetual creation ac- 

 cording to an intelligible, God-chosen method. Do not say 

 that in recognizing the " reign of law " we displace personal 

 divine agency ; for the first principle in an intelligent divine 

 government must be order, regularity, uniformity. Do not 

 imagine that law and method are the cause of any thing; or 

 that we can hold them to be causes. Natural law and method 

 / are only modes or ways in which the divine creative Cause 

 chooses to act. Do not say on the other hand, that the 

 ascription of world-regulating law to a personal Will, is the 

 delivery of the world to the government of caprice. Caprice 

 results from the absence of mind. Law and mind are correla- 

 tive terms. 



I must not claim your attention longer. Perhaps I have 

 penned some sentences which my younger readers will find 

 difficult ; but I hope you will all treasure the truth in these 

 sentences, and ponder over it; then, when a little older, you 

 will be enraptured, as I have been, with the richness and 

 depth and grandeur of the meaning which the divine hand 

 has written in the rocks and in the stars. 



L/IV. 



THE UNITY OF NATURE. 



THROUGH my window I watch the paling of the evening 

 twilight, till a mild ray from a little star meets my eye. The 

 pensive hour awakens a train of thought. A tiny ray of star- 

 light whence comes it? What is it? What does it say to 

 me? My soul listens, and I hear starry responses: "I am 

 a tremor in the universal ether. I am the throb of a world 

 in flames. It swings on the farther verge of the abyss of 

 space, and launched me years ago on a wave of ether, to be 

 floated down to your dark planet and whisper a sublime truth 

 to your understanding. I have traveled ten score thousand 

 miles a second, but since I started your grand-parents first 

 saw the day. They have spent their toilsome lives, and the 



