182 REFLECTIONS. 



to be profitably regarded, must be referred 

 more or less to the moral condition of man in 

 this world. We shall then find nature and 

 religion helpful to each other. The religion 

 of Christ is the only rectifier of that which is 

 wrong in nature ; and nature in her tarn, by 

 her analogies, strengthens man's faith in reli- 

 gion. Our Lord himself in his ministry taught 

 much by natural similitudes, and has hereby 

 left his servants a pattern they should more 

 largely follow. If the thorn, and the brier, and 

 the various impediments to the earth's bringing 

 forth the needful sustenance for man, have 

 succeeded the curse, then it is but reason- 

 able that our studies of these disorders of 

 the original beauty of creation should be made 

 with the aid of revelation. It is true that 

 the gospel was not designed to teach us phy- 

 sical science, but it was intended to explain 

 and rectify our condition, and to unfold to us 

 the relation wherein we stand to God, both for 

 time and eternity. But considering that the 

 effects of this our state prevail all over nature, 

 and will be the ultimate cause of the destruc- 

 tion of the world, it is quite clear that the 

 Scriptures, though not teachers of science, 

 must b^ the regulators of those who pursue it 



