Audubon's Oriiithology, First Volume. 347 



The study of nature is but the study of the works of the Al- 

 mighty. We see in every portion, whether the animalcule, or 

 the mastodon, the products of His all-directing hand. We trace 

 in every atom that goes to make up the whole, the undeniable 

 evidence of his inscrutable wisdom. No wonder, therefore, that 

 all who ever opened the book of nature, with a proper spirit, 

 never failed to turn from its contemplation with a more devout 

 and reverential acknowledgment of their Author's infinite wis- 

 dom, goodness, and power. No wonder, therefore, that the natu- 

 ralist is seldom or never other than most seriously impressed with 

 religious and devotional feelings. It is no wonder, limited as are 

 the number of those whose labors in the cause of natural history 

 have rendered them conspicuous, so large a proportion should 

 have been preeminent for their piety, — that the WiUoughbys and 

 the Rays, the Linnseuses and the Cuviers, and a host of others, 

 should have been as bright examples in the walks of private life, as 

 they have since become celebrated for their writings. No wonder 

 that we are constantly meeting in their productions, a pure spirit 

 of religious belief breathmg in all their writings, or bursts of 

 lofty praise and enthusiastic admiration of Nature's God, breaking 

 forth and irradiating all they ever wrote. The cold and hypo- 

 critical materialism which marked a certain school of French nat- 

 uralists in the days of their revolution, forms no real exception to 

 this rule. Their land was at the time overflowing with atheism 

 and infidelity. They bowed in weakness before the current of 

 popular frenzy, and in insincere attempts to palliate their unbelief 

 they impiously attempted to pervert the book of nature, and to 

 make it support their absurdities. But this very effort was of 

 itself the means of defeating the end they had in view, and the 

 unwieldy bubble burst under the pressure of truth. The fabric 

 of French infidelity tottered and fell under the efforts of the phi- 

 losophers to sustain it, and through the very weight of that which 

 they vainly supposed would give to it symmetry and strength. 

 Their wild conclusions disgusted by their absurdity all "whom 

 their impiety had failed to shock, and Christianity triumphed by 

 means of the very blows that were designed for its destruction. 



It is therefore impossible to come to any other conclusion than 

 that the study of natural history must have a necessary and in- 

 evitable tendency to impress the mind with the truth of religion, 

 and thereby to improve as well as regulate the moral feelings. 



