TAB CHRISTIAN NATURALlSt. 91 



In thus looking out as it were from one of nature's 

 watch-towers, and beholding on one hand the progress of 

 national genius assisted by the bounty of Providence, with 

 nature herself smiling upon man in her happiest mood, 

 ws seem to perceive but few vestiges remaining of the 

 original curse upon the ground ; but when we turn our 

 back to this prospect, and look upon the other side ot 

 the picture ; when we contemplate the penury of the 

 soil, the dreary and savage aspect of these rugged 

 moors, the desolation in short, which seems here to 

 have tossed the rocks into the wildest forms, and to shed 

 a cheerless aspect upon all around ; we seem again to be 

 transported to that * elder time,' when the world and 

 man were still writhing as it were under the immediate 

 stroke of the fall. The sight of such a wilderness may 

 at least serve to teach us, what nature and man might 

 have been, as contrasted with what they really in gene- 

 ral now are. And nought but thankfulness for the 

 past, and hope for the future, can fail to animate U8 

 while we look around on a scene which at once presents 

 to us an image of what man is in his state of nature, 

 and of what he becomes under the transforming influ- 

 ence of Christianity. 



The whole of the country which here stretches away 



