312 WALKS AND TALKS. 



Do not say the doctrine displaces the doctrine of divine 

 creation ; for it proclaims creation a perpetual creation ac- 

 cording to an intelligible, God-chosen method. Do not say 

 that in recognizing the "reign of law" we displace personal 

 divine agency ; for the first principle in an intelligent divine 

 government must be order, regularity, uniformity. Do not 

 imagine that law and method are the cause of any thing ; or 

 that we can hold them to be causes. Natural law and method 

 are only modes or ways in which the divine creative Cause 

 chooses to act. Do not say on the other hand, that the 

 ascription of world-regulating law to a personal Will, is the 

 delivery of the world to the government of caprice. Caprice 

 results from the absence of mind. Law and mind are correla- 

 tive terms. 



I must not claim your attention longer. Perhaps I have 

 penned some sentences which my younger readers will find 

 difficult ; but I hope you will all treasure the truth in these 

 sentences, and ponder over it; then, when a little older, you 

 will be enraptured, as I have been, with the richness and 

 depth and grandeur of the meaning which the divine hand 

 has written in the rocks and in the stars. 



THE UNITY OF NATURE. 



THROUGH my window I watch the paling of the evening 

 twilight, till a mild ray from a little star meets my eye. The 

 pensive hour awakens a train of thought. A tiny ray of star- 

 light whence comes it? What is it? What does it say to 

 me? My soul listens, and I hear starry responses: "I am 

 a tremor in the universal ether. I am the throb of a world 

 in flames. It swings on the farther verge of the abyss of 

 space, and launched me years ago on a wave of ether, to be 

 floated down to your dark planet and whisper a sublime truth 

 to your understanding. I have traveled ten score thousand 

 miles a second, but since I started your grand-parents first 

 saw the day. They have spent their toilsome lives, and the 



