24 THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 



than the order of the divine works.' Let us imagine, 

 if we can, a man who had nefver seen this order 

 exemplified in this particular instance, and he would be 

 just as ready to disbelieve that plants and trees could 

 spring from seed cast into the earth, as we are to 

 calculate upon the certainty of the fact. What resem- 

 blance is there indeed, between the future plant, and 

 the seed from which it springs ? How little could 

 mere reason, without experience, venture to predict 

 the result that follows from a few handful s of grain 

 scattered over the soil ! What if we adopt the 

 supposition of some Naturalists, and imagine that each 

 seed contains within it a perfect image of the future 

 plant?* What if it should be true, that the acorn 

 is only the gigantic oak in miniature .'* How does this 

 lessen the difficulty of understanding this natural 

 miracle ; and why may we not as well believe, with 

 mankind in general, that the seed is only a seed,— 

 mere rudiment or principle, which acquires by degrees 

 all the properties and forms which it afterwards becomes 



* Most seeds, says Ray, have in them a seminal plant perfectly 

 formed, as the young in the womb of animals ; the elegant 

 complication thereof in some species, is a very pleasant and 

 admirable spectacle. — Wisdom of God, p, 122. 



