tions; the numerous modulations of the human voice, the articulate sounds peculiar to the human species, by which the interchanges of thought and affection are promoted, the soft notes of the piano forte, the solemn sounds of the organ-and even the roaring of the stormy ocean, the dashings of a mighty cataract, and the rolling thunders, which elevate the soul to sentiments of sublimity and awe -are all productive of a mingled variety of pleasures; and demonstrate, that the distribution of happiness is one grand end of the operations of our bountiful Creator.

To gratify the sense of smelling, he has perfumed the air with a variety of delicious odours, which are incessantly exhaled from a thousand plants and flowers. Countless millions of these odoriferous particles, which elude the penetrating power of the finest microscope to discover, are continually wafted about by the air, and floating around us, impervious to the sight, the hearing, and the touch, but calculated to convey pleasure to the soul, through the medium of the olfactory nerves, and to enable us to "banquet on the invisible dainties of nature."

To gratify the sense of feeling, he has connected pleasure with the contact of almost every thing we have occasion to touch, and has rendered it subservient for warning us of whatever may be disagreeable or dangerous.

Had

a malevolent Being constructed the body of man, and formed the arrangements of external nature, he might have rendered the contact of every object of touch as acutely painful, as when we clasp a prickly shrub, or thrust our fingers against the point of a needle.

To gratify the sense of taste, and to nourish our bodies, he has furnished us with a rich variety of aliments, distributed, not with a niggardly and a sparing hand, but with a luxuriant profusion, suited to the tastes of every sentient being, and to the circumstances of the inhabitants of every clime. He has not confined his bounty merely to the relief of our necessities, by confining us to the use of a few tasteless herbs and roots, but has covered the surface of the earth with an admirable profusion of plants, herbs, grains, and delicious fruits of a thousand different qualities and tastes, which contribute to the sensitive enjoyment and comfort of man. In almost every re

gion of the earth, corn is to be found, in the valleys surrounded by the snowy mountains of the North, as well as in the verdant plains of the Torrid Zone. In warm regions, cool and delicious fruits are provided for the refreshment of the inhabitants, and the trees are covered with luxuriant foliage to screen them from the intensity of the solar heat!* Every season presents us with a variety of fruits peculiar to itself, distributed by the munificent hand of the "Giver of all good." The month of June presents us with cabbages, cauliflowers, and cherries; July, with gooseberries, raspberries, peaches, and apricots; August and September scatter before us, in luxuriant abundance, plums, figs, apples, pears, turnips, carrots, cresses, potatoes, and, above all, wheat, oats, rye, and barley, which constitute the "staff of bread" for the support of man and beast; and although we are indebted chiefly to summer and autumn for these rich presents, yet, by the assistance of human art, we can preserve and enjoy the greater part during winter and spring. The soil which produces these dainties has never yet lost its fertility, though it has brought forth the harvests of six thousand years, but still repays our labour with its annual treasures; and, were selfish man animated with the same liberal and generous views as his munificent Creator, every individual of the human family would be plentifully supplied with a share of these rich and delicious bounties of nature.

In fine, the happiness of man appears to be the object

*The manner in which the Creator has contrived a supply for the thirst of man, in sultry places, is worthy of admiration.-He has placed, amidst the burning sands of Africa, a plant, whose leaf, twisted round like a cruet, is always filled with a large glass full of fresh water: the gullet of this cruet is shut by the extremity of the leaf itself, so as to prevent the water from evaporating. He has planted, in some other districts of the same country, a great tree, called by the negroes Boa, the trunk of which, of a prodigious bulk, is naturally hollowed like a cistern. In the rainy season, it receives its fill of water, which continues fresh and cool in the greatest heats, by means of the tufted foliage which crowns its summit.-In some of the parched rocky islands in the West Indies, there is found a tree, called the water lianne, so full of sap, that if you cut a single branch of it, as much water is immediately discharged as a man can drink at a draught, and it is perfectly pure and limpid. See Pierre's "Studies of Nature."

of the divine care every returning season, every moment, by day, and by night. By day, He cheers us with the enlivening beams of the sun, which unfold to us the beauty and the verdure of the fields; and, lest the constant efflux of his light and heat should enfeeble our bodies, and wither the tender herbs, he commands the clouds to interpose, as so many magnificent screens, to ward off the intensity of the solar rays. When the earth is drained of its moisture, and parched with heat, he bids the clouds condense their watry treasures, and fly from other regions on the wings of the wind, to pour their waters upon the fields, not in overwhelming and destructive torrents, but in small drops and gentle showers, to refresh the thirsty soil, and revive the vegetable tribes. He has spread under our feet a carpet of lovely green, richer than all the productions of the Persian loom, and has thrown around our habitation an azure canopy, which directs our view to the distant regions of infinite space.-By night, he draws a veil of darkness over the mountains and the plains, that we may be enabled to penetrate to the regions of distant worlds, and behold the moon walking in brightness, the aspects of the planetary globes, the long trains of comets, and the innumerable host of stars. At this season, too, all nature is still, that we may enjoy in quiet the refreshments of sleep, to invigorate our mental and corporeal powers. "As a mother stills every little noise, that her infant be not disturbed; as she draws the curtains around its bed, and shuts out the light from its tender eyes; so God draws the curtains of darkness around us, so he makes all things to be hushed and still, that his large family may sleep in peace." In a word, if we look around us to the forests which cover the mountains, or if we look downwards to the quarries and mines in the bowels of the earth, we behold abundance of materials for constructing our habitations, for embellishing the abodes of civilized life, and for carrying forward improvements in the arts and sciences. And, if we consider the surrounding atmosphere, we shall find it to contain the principle of life, and the element of fire, by means of which our winter evenings are cheered and illuminated in the absence of the sun. -Contemplating all these benign agencies as flowing from the care and benevolence of our Almighty Parent,

the pious mind may adopt the beautiful language of the poet, though in a sense somewhat different from what he intended :

"For me kind Nature wakes her genial power,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose, renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."

POPE.

Viewing the various scenes and harmonies of nature, in relation to man, and to the gratification of his different senses, we may also say, in the language of Akenside, in poem "On the Pleasures of Imagination," that

his

"Not a breeze

Flies o'er the meadow, not a cloud imbibes
The setting sun's effulgence; not a strain
From all the tenants of the warbling shade
Ascends, but whence his bosom can partake
Fresh pleasure and delight.-

The rolling waves, the sun's unwearied course,
The elements and seasons, all declare
For what the Eternal Maker has ordain'd
The powers of man: we feel within ourselves

His energy divine: He tells the heart

He meant, He made us to behold and love
What He beholds and loves, the general orb
Of life and being: to be great like Him,
Beneficent and active.".

All

Let us now consider, for a few moments, the Wisdom which is displayed in the harmonious adjustment of the organs of sense to the scenes of external nature. the scenes of beauty, grandeur, and benignity, which surround us, in the earth and heavens, would remain as one mighty blank, unproductive of enjoyment, unless our bodies were "fearfully and wonderfully" framed, and endowed with organs fitted for enabling us to hold a correspondence with the material world. Ten thousands of vessels, tubes, bones, muscles, ligaments, membranes, motions, contrivances, and adaptations, beyond the reach of the human understanding fully to investigate or to comprehend, must be arranged, and act in harmonious concert,

before any one sense belonging to man can perceive and enjoy its objects.

Before the eye can behold a landscape, and be charmed with its beauties, it was requisite that three humours should be formed, of different sizes, different densities, and different refractive powers-three coats, or delicate membranes, with some parts opaque, and some transparent, some black, and some white, some of them formed of radial, and some with circular fibres, composed of threads finer than those of the spider's web. The crystalline humour required to be composed of two thousand very thin spherical lamina, or scales, lying one upon another, every one of these scales made up of one single fibre, or finest thread, wound, in a most stupendous manner, this way, and that way, so as.to run several courses, and to meet in as many centres. This curious and delicate piece of organization required to be compressed into the size of a ball of only half an inch in diameter, and a socket composed of a number of small bones, to be hollowed out and exactly fitted for its reception. A bed of loose fat for this ball to rest upon, a lid or curtain to secure it from danger, a variety of muscles to enable it to move upwards, and downwards, to the right, and to the left, and a numerous assemblage of minute veins, arteries, nerves, lymphatics, glands, and other delicate pieces of animal machinery, of which we have no distinct conception, were still requisite to complete this admirable organ. Even in this state it would be of no use for the purpose of vision, unless it were connected with the brain by the optic nerve, through the medium of which the impressions of visible objects are conveyed to the soul. Still, in addition to all these contrivances, a wonderful machinery requires to be in action, and an admirable effect produced, before a landscape can be contemplated. Ten thousand millions of rays, compounded of a thousand different shades of colour, must fly off in every direction from the objects which compose the surrounding scene, and be compressed into the space of one eighth of an inch, in order to enter the eye, and must paint every object in its true colour, form, and proportion, on a space not exceeding half an inch in diameter. Were any one of the parts which compose this complicated machine, either wanting or deranged; were it changed into