ABDRESS. lxXV 



age of improved knowledge ; would they not have delighted to celebrate the 

 marvels of the Creator's power ? They would have described the secret 

 forces by which the wandering orbs of light are retained in their destined 

 paths ; the boundless extent of the celestial spaces in which worlds on 

 worlds are heaped ; the wonderful mechanism by which light and heat are 

 conveyed through distances which to mortal minds seem quite unfathom- 

 able ; the mysterious agency of electricity, destined at one time to awaken 

 men's minds to an awful sense of a present Providence, but in after-times 

 to become a patient minister of man's will, and convey his thoughts with 

 the speed of light across the inhabited globe ; the beauties and prodigies 

 of contrivance which the animal and vegetable world display, from man- 

 kind downwards to the lowest zoophyte, from the stately oak of the pri- 

 meval forest to the humblest plant which the microscope unfolds to view; 

 the history of every stone on the mountain brow, of every gay-coloured 

 insect which nutters in the sun-beam; — all would have been described, and 

 all which the discoveries of our more fortunate posterity will in due time 

 disclose, and in language such as none but they could command. It is re- 

 set ved for future ages to sing such a glorious hymn to the Creator's praise. 

 But is there not enough now seen and heard to make indifference to the 

 wonders around us a deep reproach, nay, almost a crime ? If we have neither 

 leisure nor inclination to track the course of the planet and comet through 

 boundless space ; to follow the wanderings of the subtle fluid in the galvanic 

 coil or the nicely poised magnet ; to read the world's history written on her 

 ancient rocks, the sepulchres of stony relics of ages long gone past, to analyse 

 with curious eye the wonderful combinations of the primitive elements and 

 the secret mysteries of form and being in animal and plant; discovering 

 everywhere connecting links and startling analogies and proofs of adaptation 

 of means to ends ; — all tending to charm the senses, to teach, to reclaim a 

 being, who seems but a creeping worm in the presence of this great Creation 

 — What, I repeat, if we will not or cannot do these things, or any of these 

 things, is that any reason why these speaking marvels should be to us almost 

 as though they were not ? Marvels indeed they are, but they are also myste- 

 ries, the unravelling of some of which tasks to the utmost the highest order 

 of human intelligence. Let us ever apply ourselves seriously to the task, 

 feeling assured that the more we thus exercise, and by exercising improve 

 our intellectual faculties, the more worthy shall we be, the better shall we 

 be fitted to come nearer to our God. 



