THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 113 



be contemplated without the highest emotions. He 

 who has neglected when occasion offered to ascend to 

 the high places of the earth, must want a soul fitted 

 for the highest and noblest exercises of piety. He 

 turns his back upon a feast which his Creator has pre- 

 pared for him, and is destitute of that sensibility, which 

 the usages of every people, and the piety of every creed, 

 has confessed and sanctioned. We may sum up, in short, 

 the varied and striking attractions which here present 

 themselves in the glowing language of a modern writer : 

 * Mountains are the source of the most absorbing sensa- 

 tions; there stands magnitude giving the instant impres- 

 sion of a power above man; — grandeur that defies 

 decay ; — antiquity that tells of ages unnumbered ; — 

 beauty that the touch of time makes only more beauti- 

 ful; — use exhaustless for the service of man; — strength 

 imperishable as the globe ; — the monument of eternity; 

 — the truest earthly emblem of that everliving, un- 

 changeable, irresistible majesty, by whom and for 

 whom all things were made.* 



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