appearance motionless, to feed itself, to grow, and to produce its fruit: not all alike, but each one differently. Had they been all alike, all must have grown on the same soil, in the same aspect-now, from the hardy Lichen that brayes the rigour of the poles, to the tender offspring of a tropical sun, there are some that can thrive in all. There is no doubt that of two plants of certain decriptions placed near each other, each one from its different formation will imbibe the different juices suited to itself, on which its companion would have died, perhaps. It is most certainly not without a reason, whether that reason can be traced or not, that one leaf is clothed with silken hairs, while another has a coat of glossy smoothness. Why has the Vine the long, winding tendril that never grows upon the Oak? Why are the seeds of the Missletoe denied the power of rooting in the earth, and yet have a quality no other seed possesses of adhering to the bark of the trees on which they take root and live? Why, but because it is the place that God assigns them? More discernible still is the fitness of everything in the animal creation. Why has the Beetle rough harsh scales upon its wings, when it could fly like the Butterfly without them? Plainly because it was meant to dwell in holes and crevices where without them its wings would be broken and destroyed. Why is the bill of the Sparrow drawn to a sharp straight point, while that of the Hawk is curved and hooked? Because the Sparrow is to pick out the minute seed from its hiding place in the flower, and the Hawk is to rend the flesh of the animals it feeds We know all this, and we admire it and admit the wisdom and beauty of the arrangement-it would seem to us a thing most strange, perverse, and ludicrous, that the Frog abiding in the muddy pool, should sigh to be invested with the Pheasant's tail-that the finned Trout should propose to be flying through the air, and the Cabbage to be nursed and stifled in the green-house. But alas! bears it no resemblance to the things we hear and see elsewhere, to something that we feel and in our folly utter?

upon.

The same Being who created the animal and the vegetable race, determined for us our powers, our characters, and circumstances. So exactly right in those, can it be here only he is wrong? Can he have placed one of us in a situation in which we ought not to be, denied us any natural advantages it would be desirable we should possess, or given us powers and faculties unsuited to the part he means us to perform? It is impossible. Our pride suggests it, our folly gives it utterance almost as often as we speak of ourselves or our affairs; scarcely any one among us thinks he is by nature and fortune where and what he should be. Yet not more absurd are the complaints and wishes we have imagined in the wiser brute, than those we hear from the lips of beings capable of knowing and reflecting on their absurdity— professing too to be aware from whom all things are, and by whose will all things are determined.

It is most true, indeed, that by man's defection, confusion has been introduced into the Creator's perfect work, and that in one sense we are not and cannot be what we ought to be, and what we should desire to be. But while to this moral perversion we are sufficiently insensible, our murmurs and complainings are ever breathed against the natural and providential portion assigned us upon earth. To hear the language of society one might suppose that every individual in it had been wronged by not being or having something that he is not or has not. How unfitted he is for the station he is in, how unfortu nate it is that he happens to be so placed, how happy and how useful he might have been under other circumstances, how hard is his portion, how unequal the distribution of things, how blind is fortune, how unjust is fate, how unequitable is the world in his behalf-what is all this but the language of creatures who think they could arrange the affairs of the world better than He who does it, and understand the nature and propensities of men better than He who made them?

But far from understanding for each other, we may be

assured we understand not even for ourselves. We come into the world very differently moulded and endowed, our minds as little resembling each other as our personsand equally various are the portions to which we are born." The circumstances of after life, all as much the arrangement of our Maker as our first introduction to it, make even more difference perhaps than our original constitution. The result is, that each one has character, talents, powers, habits, feelings, necessities, and capabilities, as peculiarly his own and distinct from others as his station in life, which, as we know, can be occupied but by one. Now whatever these be, we may rest assured we have no" right whatever to complain: no injustice has been done us and no unfitness is imposed on us: where Providence has placed us is where we ought to be, and except în so far as by our sin we may unfit ourselves, of which we have small right to complain, we are what for our situation it was best we should be. As much right has the Worm to complain that he has not the Beetle's wings, or the Raven that he is not as small as the Linnet, as we to complain that we have not the talents, the beauty, or the fortune of another. As reasonable is it for the Ox to desire to sit upon the tree and sing, while the Blackbird tills the soil, as for men to envy and malign each other for being differently placed and differently accommodated. We cannot read indeed the fitness and propriety of things in the affairs of men as we can in the natural world-because we know not our own hearts, the cause, and consequence, and eternal issues of God's dealings with us→→ but are we not bound to believe it; and if to believe it, to act, and speak, and feel, as if we did so? Are we free to imagine that we alone of all created things are misformed, mis-managed, and misplaced?