Characters of the Works of God.

REVELATION XV. 3.

Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty!

IT is to be regretted, that fo much of the impreffion which the grandeur and beauty of nature are adapted to make upon our minds, is prevented or effaced by familiarity. The magnificent scenery of the material world first prefents itself to our fenfes, at a period of life when we are incapable of reflection; and afterwards opens upon our understandings in fuch detached portions, and by fuch flow gradations, as almost entirely to preclude the lively emotions of surprise and admiration. Hence we are too apt to wan

der

der over the well-known objects around us, however grand and fublime, however beautiful, or however inftructive, with the vacant eye of inattention. Whilft Nature is perpetually proclaiming, through all her works, that there is a Power above us, and that the Being who made and governs all things is great, and wife, and good, beyond our most exalted conceptions, we are too often inclined to receive her report with the careleffness and coldnefs with which we hear an old and worncut tale.

To compenfate, in fome measure, for the inconvenience which unavoidably arifes from the frequency with which the objects of nature come under the notice of our fenfes, without leading our minds to the contemplation of its great Author, it is neceffary that we fometimes make it our deliberate and serious business to furvey the world in which we dwell as the workmanship of the Lord God Almighty. We should contemplate the ordinary appearances

pearances of grandeur and beauty in the heavens and the earth, not merely to afford an elegant entertainment to the imagination, or to gratify a refined and cultivated taste, but to fix in our minds a deep and habitual impreffion of those fentiments of veneration and gratitude, with which the Intelligent Source of all that is great and good ought ever to be regarded.

It is one of the greatest advantages which we derive from the advancement of natural knowledge, that by giving us more extenfive and accurate views of nature in its feveral departments, it furnishes us with innumerable illuftrations of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness, of the Supreme Being, which are wholly unknown to vulgar or uninformed minds, and confequently tends to correct and elevate our conceptions of him, whom, after our utmost exertions, we fhall never find out to perfection. To content ourselves with merely obferving the appearances,

and

and inveftigating the laws, of the material world, without applying our obfervations to the purposes of religion, would be to deprive ourselves of one of the most valuable fruits of philofophy. Every object in nature which is adapted to awaken our curiofity, excite our admiration, or afford us pleasure, becomes doubly interesting, when it is contemplated as the work of God. Allow me, then, at this time, to conduct you through a general furvey of the material creation under this character, and to lay before you fuch particulars refpecting the grandeur, the beauty, the variety, the mutual relation, and the utility, of the Divine works, as may serve to ftrengthen your pious fentiments, and to call from your lips the language of devout admiration-" Greát and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty!"

The characters of grandeur and magnificence are fo legibly infcribed

upon

the

general face of nature, that the most untaught eye cannot fail to read them, nor

the

the most uncultivated imagination to contemplate them with admiration. The furface of the earth, confidered merely as a vaft picture drawn by the hand of Nature, exhibits scenes adapted to excite emotions of fublimity. Plains, whofe extent exceeds the limits of human vision; mountains, whofe fides are embrowned with craggy rocks, and whofe majestic fummits hide themselves in the clouds; feas, whose spreading waters unite far distant countries; and oceans, which begird the vaft globe itself, are objects, at all times, ftriking to the imagination. If from the earth we lift up our eyes on high, new scenes of magnificence demand our attentive admiration: the glorious fun, the eye and foul of this material world, poffeffing his feat amidst the vast expanse, and spreading light and heat through the world; and, in their turn, the numberlefs lamps of night illuminating the firmament with their native fires.

Let