62 THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 



Not of myself, — by some great Maker then, 

 In goodness and in power preeminent : 

 Tell me how I may know him ; how adore, 

 From whom I have that thus I move and live, 

 And feel that I am happier than I know.' 



But if our thoughts are thus carried backward by the 

 season of Spring, to that time when man had not yet 

 fallen, they may also be carried forward to a period and 

 a place of still greater importance ; to that world where 

 there is fulness of joy ; — -an eternal spring of all con- 

 ceivable blessedness in the heavenly Paradise. Poetry 

 may help to eicpress this idea, and has well embodied 

 the sentiment in a few lines addressed to the Creator,—- 



* Oh Thou our good beyond compare. 

 If thus thy meaner works are fair ; 

 If thus thy glories gild the span 

 Of ruin'd earth, and sinful man. 

 How glorious must that mansion be 

 Where thy redeem'd shall live with thee !* 



It has pleased our God in infinite mercy, notwithstand- 

 ing the fall, to leave us a taste of those pleasures which 

 we might altogether have been deprived of upon earth, 

 in order that we may better know how to prize, and 

 earnestly seek after, those joys which are at his right 

 hand for evermore. Surely this is the right improve- 



