SIR J. E. SMITH. 



79 



ciple in the most corrupt times, has taken occasion to con- 

 gratulate his country, and to pour out his grateful effusions 

 to Divine Providence, in a style worthy of Milton, for the 

 establishment of religion, law, and liberty, by the revolu- 

 tion which placed King William on the throne. An 

 honest Englishman, however retired in his habits and 

 pursuits, could not have withheld this tribute at such a 

 time ; nor was any loyalty ever more personally disinte- 

 rested than that of Ray. 



The year 1690 was the date of the first pubHcation of 

 his noble work on ' The Wisdom of God in the Creation,' 

 of which we have already spoken, and whose sale through 

 many editions was very extensive. In 1700 he printed a 

 book more exclusively within the sphere of his sacred pro- 

 fession, called ' A Persuasive to a Ploly Life,' a rare 

 performance of the kind at that day, being devoid of en- 

 thusiasm, mysticism, or cant, as well as of religious bigotry 

 or party spirit, " and employing the plain and solid argu- 

 ments of reason for the best of purposes." His three 

 ' Physico-Theological Discourses concerning the Chaos, 

 Deluge, and Dissolution of the World,' of which the 

 original materials had been collected and prepared for- 

 merly at Cambridge, came out in 1692, and were reprinted 

 the following year. A third edition, superintended by 

 Derham, was published in 1713. This able editor took 

 up the same subject himself, in a similar performance, the 

 materials of which, like Ray's, were first delivered in ser- 

 mons at Bow Church, he having been appointed reader of 

 Mr. Boyle's lectures. 



While Ray was, from time to time, intent on these 

 moral and religious performances, in which he laboured 

 equally to impress and elucidate the truths of natural and 

 revealed religion, as well as to enforce its precepts and 

 duties, he was no less attentive than formerly to his sys- 

 tematical studies. Dr. Tancred Robinson is recorded, by 

 Derham, as having first prompted our great naturalist to 

 undertake a ' Synopsis Methodica,' or classical arrange- 

 ment of the whole animal, as he had done of the vege- 



