294 
CONCLUSION. 
becomes a temple, and life itself one continued act of ado¬ 
ration. The change is no less than this; that whereas form¬ 
erly God was seldom in our thoughts, we can now scarcely 
look upon anything without perceiving its relation to him. 
Every organized natural body, in the provisions which it 
contains for its sustentation and propagation, testifies a 
care, on the part of the Creator, expressly directed to these 
purposes. We are on all sides surrounded by such bodies; 
examined in their parts, wonderfully curious; compared 
with one another, no less wonderfully diversified. So that 
the mind, as well as the eye, may either expatiate in vari¬ 
ety and multitude, or fix itself down to the investigation 
of particular divisions of the science. And in either case 
it will rise up from its occupation, possessed by the subject, 
in a very different manner, and with a very different degree 
of influence, from what a mere assent to any verbal pro¬ 
position which can be formed concerning the existence of 
the Deity, at least that merely complying assent with which 
those about us are satisfied, and with which we are too 
apt to satisfy ourselves, will or can produce upon the 
thoughts. More especially may this difference be per¬ 
ceived, in the degree of admiration and of awe with which 
the Divinity is regarded, when represented to the under¬ 
standing by its own remarks, its own reflections, and its 
own reasonings, compared with what is excited by any 
language that can be used by others. The works of nature 
want only to be contemplated. When contemplated, they 
have everything in them which can astonish by their great¬ 
ness: for, of the vast scale of operation through which our 
discoveries carry us, at one end we see an intelligent Pow¬ 
er arranging planetary systems, fixing, for instance, the 
trajectory of Satui'n, or constructing a ring of two hundred 
thousand miles diameter to surround his body, and be sus¬ 
pended like a magnificent arch over the heads of his in¬ 
habitants; and, at the other, bending a hooked tooth, con¬ 
certing and providing an appropriate mechanism, for the 
clasping and reclasping of the filaments of the feather of the 
humming bird. We have proof, not only of both these 
works proceeding from an intelligent agent, but of their 
proceeding from the same agent: for, in the first place, we 
can trace an identity of plan, a connexion of system, from 
Saturn to our own globe: and when arrived upon our globe, 
we can, in the second place, pursue the connexion through 
all the organized, especially the animated, bodies which it 
supports. We can observe marks of a common relation, 
