8 INTRODUCTION. 



and again from the weak infant and its genus of undeveloped 

 faculties and jiowers, to the strength and wisdom of the man, 

 who yet looks forward to the passage into higher life to come ? 

 Do we not rather wonder and adore ? And if the great universe 

 without us was so framed that — to take an extreme view — 

 all we see has, like man, been developed also from one germ, in 

 sublimest order by lixed processes which we call Laws, have 

 we not still more reason to wonder and adore 'i God works in 

 a mysterious way His wonders to perform, and we canuot by 

 wisdom search Him out. Our knowledge has its bounds; but 

 we do know that there can be no law without a lawgiver. We 

 may speculate idly, and opinion may go far astray. Xo one 

 man's ways, whatever light beat on them, are fully compreliended 

 by his fellow-men ; and when we seek to trace the ways of God 

 in shaping the wide Earth He gives us to till and inhabit, our 

 powers of comprehension, great as they may seem to us. canuot 

 reach far. But the earth was given us to till not only with the 

 plough and spade. All knowledge and wisdom of man is 

 quarried out of the surrounding world, when we apply the 

 minds God gave us to the traces of His Wisdom with which we 

 are surrounded. The Laws of Xature that we seek to find are 

 parts of the Divine Wisdom, which can be variously applied to 

 our well-being when they have been discovered and made part of 

 human knowledge. Bridge, mine, or tower, steam-engine or tele- 

 scope, every work of applied science has this source. There is a 

 revelation also in ^S'ature, as Kichard Hooker, on behalf of thg 

 Church, wisely told those who decried the use of Reason. The 

 groat harmonies of Xature yield us knowledge fruitful towards 

 the development of man. Not to inquire is not to obey the will 

 of the Creator, is to refuse submission to the hand of God, who 

 also in this way shapes us to His image. 



U. M. 

 'laanarij 1887. 



