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bounded by our relation to Him simply as His creatures. We 
cannot have come into being without parents and other family 
relations ; we cannot give free scope to our affections, nor 
develope our intellect, nor act adequately, nor secure full bodily 
enjoyment, but as we form part of a community, the various 
members of which contribute to our improvement. And, as 
communal life is not a separable accident of humanity, but a 
necessity of our nature, we are bound to answer to its Author for 
the general good, so far as it is in our power to promote it. 
And it further follows that,as we are communal by the very 
constitution of our nature, we can by no means relieve our- 
selves of these obligations to our Author to live natural, that 
is, communal lives,—lives in which we shall seek, not our own 
good only, but the good of others also. 
We are placed,—not have placed ourseives,—in this world, 
and in this vast and wonderful universe, which we have not 
made, which we cannot modify, not one of whose properties 
we can change, and to which we cannot add an atom. But 
we derive all our support from it, both as to body and intellect. 
Not only are its material resources unlimited, so that, by its 
orderly alternations, food, clothing, and every other requisite 
- for happy and full physical life are furnished, generation after 
generation, but its structure and combination are so various, 
and multiform, and recondite, that it is capable of revealing 
to us, with continually-increasing clearness and breadth, the 
mode by which its great Author works. Thus it brings our 
intellect into contact with His, and teaches us the same order 
and breadth of thought as that which by a supreme volition 
has produced all things. 
We know that the most exquisite skill of the mechanic is 
only a faithful copy of the order of the world itself, in the 
application of material properties in a material substance. 
All pure science is but a knowledge and application of the 
properties of number and space in their multiform combina- 
tions and relations. The deductions of the chemist are but 
the discovery of some of the secret processes of nature, or 
rather of its great Author in His material operation ; while 
the artist,in his most noble and original creations, is simply 
using the material which the Creator has provided after His 
own method. ‘Thus, the world is not only our habitation, but 
our school and our storehouse. Without it our body would 
die and our mind become inert. 
But we are not only dependent on the great Author of all 
for the production and furnishing of this world, but also for 
the constant operation by which its forces are maintained, its 
substance renewed, and its life preserved; for each of these 
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