38 ROYAL WATER-LILY. 



festing the divine power and wisdom of their Creator. 

 Such examples as these exhibit practical and unequi- 

 vocal evidences of the fallacy of the opinions of those 

 followers of science (of whom we might expect better 

 things), who, in their researches into the works of 

 nature, seek not to trace the " footprints " of an all- 

 creating and all-sustaining God. If cold, scientific 

 research is of itself sufficient to gratify the genuine 

 student of nature, or if that nobler kind of knowledge 

 which profiteth to everlasting life is incompatible 

 with the pursuit of purely scientific discovery, why 

 do we find the immortal Swede, the greatest, the 

 truest, and the most scientific of all naturalists, 

 falling upon his knees in the midst of his obser- 

 vations, arrested in his progress by the manifesta- 

 tions of Divine power exhibited in the objects of his 

 study? We cannot well conceive a more heartless 

 and unhappy man than he who plods his weary way 

 along the gloomy paths of godless science, deaf to the 

 holy whisperings of nature. " There are two books," 

 says Sir Thomas Brown, " from whence I collect my 

 divinity : besides that written by God, another of his 

 servant Nature, that universal and public manu- 

 script that lies exposed unto the eyes of all. Those 

 that never saw him in the one have discovered him 

 in the other. This was the Scripture and theology 

 of the heathens ; and surely they knew better how to 

 join and read these mystical letters than we Chris- 

 tians, who cast a more careless eye on those common 



