manifestation of wisdom, what a display of it in the fact of huge bodies moving through space with the velocity of one thousand miles in a minute, yet that motion regulated with mathematical exactness! If comprehensive generalization be a proof of wisdom, how profound the wisdom which caused the same force, that binds an atom to the surface of our planet, to give union, order, and stability to congregated worlds! If efficiency and perfection of plan be a proof of wisdom, how complete that evidence when we see antagonistic forces, each of which, if left alone, would bring sudden destruction to the universe, so nicely balanced, so accurately adjusted, that they coalesce in the perpetual order, activity, and harmony of the celestial systems! On the one side, the omnipresent and powerful grasp of the gravitating force, that would drag the planets from their places to an all-absorbing centre, is curbed and restrained by the centrifugal force; and, on the other, the impetuous velocity that would carry the whirling orbs away into a fathomless immensity is reined in and controlled; and the combined forces made to originate and perpetuate that mechanical adjustment, which is the normal standard of order, and the embodiment of geometrical regularity. The Divine Author of this system must be wise in heart, and wonderful in counsel.

4. The concentration and diffusion of light and heat afford a further display of the Creator's wisdom.

If the faculty of vision be essential to the well-being of the inhabitants of a planet, and heat be essential to life and vegetation, then must there be some contrivance to supply these important requisites, and a wise and beneficent Being would select the most simple and efficient means for effecting them. How, then, were these ends to be accomplished? Shall each celestial body be made self-luminous? That were to divest the universe of much of its interesting variety. Besides, to have made each body self-luminous would have been, so far as we can determine, to have eclipsed, or rendered invisible to 'us, all other worlds but our own. It is the night that reveals the stars to our view. Amid the brightness of mid-day, an ordinary observer can see no celestial object but the sun, or at times,

perchance, he has a view of the pale moon; but even these bodies, we may suppose, would not be visible if the earth were self-luminous.

A system, then, which would exclude from human view the splendid wonders of the heavens, which would shut out from our gaze every world but our own little planet, was not desirable, and could not be chosen by that wisdom which prefers the best ends and selects the best means to accomplish them. Therefore the infinite Creator has chosen to make the sun the dispenser of light and heat to our earth, and all the planets which revolve around him; and, from his magnitude and central position, he alone is fitted for that office. Here, again, simplicity and efficiency of means are seen as the evidence of wisdom.

In reference to light, it may be remarked that its property of reflection evinces the wisdom of the Divine Being. For, however profusely the sun might shed his beams upon our world, no opaque body would be visible if light had not the property of reflection. We should see the sun glaring the more fiercely, from the surrounding darkness; the twinkling stars would be visible; but no moon, no planet by night, no landscape scene by day. Neither the countenance of a friend, nor even our own form, would be visible. Every terrestrial object, opaque in its nature, would be shrouded in Cimmerian gloom. The faculty of vision, which now reveals the marvels of creation and adds so greatly to the sum of our enjoyment, would be almost useless, and we should stumble at noon-day. But against this calamitous privation the Creator has provided, by giving to light a reflective property, which renders opaque bodies luminous by the beams they borrow from others, and fills our earth with radiance and beauty not its own. It is thus, too, that the dark planets and satellites of the solar system are converted into celestial mirrors, which shed their borrowed lustre upon neighbour worlds, relieving the gloom of midnight and imparting a silver radiance when the monarch of day has disappeared. How great the benefit, but how simple the means! Herein is

the wisdom of God. Other properties of light will be noticed when we come to dwell on the attribute of goodness.

But how shall an opaque body like our earth alternately receive the solar influence on every part of its surface? Shall the great dispenser of light and heat be carried round our little planet, as the Ptolemaic theory supposed? Such an idea was for many ages the foundation of man's favourite theory; but a system so complicated and ill-adjusted had no place in the counsels of the Creator. Modern discovery has exposed the absurdity, not to say the physical impossibility, of the Ptolemaic system, and demonstrated that, by a plan "divinely simple," the Deity secures his beneficent purpose. By giving each planet a rotation on its axis, the several portions of its surface are regularly brought under the influence of the sun's enlightening and invigorating rays, and successive day and night, so suitable to alternate periods of activity and repose, and so fitted to reveal the splendour and magnificence of Jehovah's works, are afforded to mankind. The wisdom of such sublime and manifold arrangements must strike the mind of every observer.

But another exigency was to be met. Experience shows us that the solar rays, emitted from a central body on a sphere like that of our earth, would act with too much intensity, from their directness, on the equatorial parts, and too faintly, from their obliqueness, on the polar regions of the globe; and the result would be, that while the torrid zone would be changed into a scorched and sterile desert, the higher latitudes would be bound in the ice of a dreary, perpetual, and hopeless winter, unless some means were devised to divert the solar rays from the equator, and dispense them in alternate periods over a wider area of the earth's surface. How was this exigency to be met? The Creator has given a solution to this problem. By the admirable contrivance of inclining the axis of the earth at an angle of 23 degrees, from a perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, each day shifts the vertical zone of the solar rays, and within the year distributes it over an area of 47 degrees; thus relieving the equatorial parts from an excess of heat, and dis

pensing it where most needed-in the colder latitudes of the globe. Nor is this all: this admirable contrivance produces that variety in the length of the day, and that protraction of twilight, so advantageous to colder climes and higher latitudes, and affords that diversity in the seasons of the year so agreeable to our nature, and so adapted to the alternate periods of repose and activity required for the development of vegetation and the supply of our wants. In this brief and imperfect view of cosmical arrangements, what sublime and beneficent purposes are unfolded, and by what simple means they are attained! What grandeur of conception and what generalizing power! what perspicacity of view and all-comprehensive wisdom, must distinguish the UNCREATED MIND which originated the plan and executed the design!

SECTION II.-IN THE STRUCTURE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF OUR WORLD THE WISDOM OF THE DEITY IS DISPLAYED.

THE fact that man exists as the lord of this world, implies that the earth was made for him-specially adapted as a place for his habitation as a theatre for the exercise and development of his powers. Ere he was brought into being, this fair world was prepared for his reception. Its mountains were reared, its valleys scooped, its ocean chained within appointed bounds; its rivers, like net-work, intersecting and fertilizing its bosom; its foundations built up of solid rocks, and enriched with metallic ores; its surface clothed with living verdure, stocked with vegetation, and replenished with endless forms of animal existence; its circumference enveloped with a transparent and life-sustaining atmosphere, garnished with a drapery of clouds, and inclosed with a canopy studded with gems, sparkling with the radiance of distant worlds. The wisdom which constructed this noble theatre from a heterogeneous mass, and postponed the creation of man until his habitation was thus prepared for his reception, may well challenge our admiration.

From an inexhaustible profusion of facts, let a few evidences of this wisdom be selected.

1. In the due proportion and distribution of land and water, the wisdom of the Deity is displayed.

Though man is a terrene being, the waters of the ocean are as essential to his existence as to the inhabitants of the deep. But how is water produced? It is not an original and simple element, but what Sir John Herschel, in his condensed and expressive style, would designate "a manufactured article." It is a compound formed by the combination of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen. Of these two gases, one-hydrogen-is inflammable; and the other-oxygen-is the supporter of combustion. How mysterious that water should consist of these two gases! How mysterious, too, that just so much water as is needed should be produced, and no more! Nor is the wonder explained away by referring the fact to the operation of chemical causes, for those chemical causes are themselves the effects of a pre-existent Cause, whose wisdom ordained the laws of chemistry, and so exactly foresaw and adjusted their operations to the production of the given result.

How is it that this liquid element is continually undergoing a circulating process, passing from the ocean to the clouds, from the clouds to the earth, and from the earth back to its source, the ocean? This process is, indeed, essential to the moisture and fertilization of the earth, and to the perpetuation of animal and vegetable life, for without it the earth would soon become a parched waste; stripped of its verdure and beauty, it would be nothing but a dreary sepulchre of everything that lives on its surface. But how is this process originated and perpetuated? By evaporation on the one hand, and condensation on the other, it may be replied. True, but evaporation and condensation are only names for effects of remoter causes, which ultimately carry us to the great First Cause, whose mind conceived and determined every link in this wonderful arrangement. Moreover, how is it that the antagonistic causes of evaporation and condensation are so nicely balanced, that the quantum of water continues apparently the same without any appreciable differ