VISION. 445 



are incompetent to understand, because we per- 

 ceive only the ultimate effects, and remain igno- 

 rant of the operations by which those effects are 

 produced. In attempting to investigate these 

 obscure functions of the animal or vegetable 

 economy, we might fancy ourselves engaged in 

 the perusal of a volume, written in some un- 

 known language, where we have penetrated the 

 meaning of a few words and sentences, sufficient 

 to show us that the whole is pregnant with the 

 deepest thought, and conveys a tale of surpassing 

 interest and wonder, but where we are left to 

 gather the sense of connecting passages by the 

 guidance of remote analogies or vague conjecture. 

 Wherever we fortunately succeed in decypher- 

 ing any continued portion of the discourse, we 

 find it characterized by a perfection of style, and 

 grandeur of conception, which at once reveal 

 a master's hand, and which kindle in us the 

 most ardent desire of supplying the wide chasms 

 perpetually intervening in the mysterious and 

 inspiring narrative. But in the subject which 

 now claims our attention we have been permitted 

 to trace, for a considerable extent, the continuity 

 of the design, and the lengthened series of means 

 employed for carrying that design into execu- 

 tion ; and the view which is thus unfolded of 

 the magnificent scheme of creation is calculated 

 to give us the most sublime ideas of the wisdom, 



THE POWER, AND THE BENEVOLENCE OF GoD. 



On none of the works of the Creator, which 



