LAW OF NATURE. .1 1 



action ceases along with them. Nor do we ever hear 

 of a plant's learning wisdom, and delaying the expan- 

 sion of its blossoms any one season, however those of a 

 former year had been blighted by an early frost. As 

 little would we hear of reason among the animals, if 

 the ascription of it were not a sort of tribute that 

 man pays to his own vanity, by considering the 

 other creatures in so far his imitators, although by 

 so doing, he saps the foundation of his own best 

 hope. 



By these observations it is by no means intended to 

 lessen the excitement to the study of nature, or to dimi- 

 nish the pleasure which that study is so well calculated 

 to afford ; but rather to free the subject from error and 

 danger, and thereby render the pleasure and the profit 

 more complete ; to impress upon those who have not 

 thought much upon such subjects, that we must not 

 judge of God after the manner of man; that we must 

 not limit his working to that which would be our 

 mode ; that we must not, because we cannot accom- 

 plish our small triumphs over matter without the accu- 

 mulated experience of ages, dare to suppose that He 

 needs any such help in his working. Wonderful as are 

 the properties and powers with which we find organic, 

 and even inorganic matter, endowed, we must not sup- 

 pose that He could not have formed them all, and 

 formed them (were that to our comprehension possible) 

 ten thousand times more wonderful than they are, with- 

 out the necessity of any subordinate mind to guide 

 them. The mere fact of their existence is far more 

 astonishing than any thing that they can do ; the germ 



