THE WORKS OF CREATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19268, 3 January 1931, Page 21 (Supplement)

THE WORKS OF CREATION.

Look! are not the fields covered with a delightful verdure? Is there not something in the woods and groves, in the rivers and clear springs, that soothes, that transports the soul? At the prospect of the deep and wide ocean, or some huge mountain whose top is lost in the clouds, or of an old gloomy forest, are not our minds filled with a pleasing awe? Even in rocks and deserts is there not an agreeable wildness? llow sincere a pleasure is it to behold the natural beauties of the earth! To preserve and renew our relish for them, is not the veil of night alternately drawn over her face, and does she not change her dress with the seasons? How aptly are the elements disposed! What variety and use is the meanest productions of Nature! What delicacy, what beauty, what contrivance in animal and vegetable bodies! llow exquisitely are all things suited as well. to their particular ends as to constitute opposite parts of the whole! Raise now your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those glorious luminaries that adorn the high arth of heaven. The motion and situation of the planets, are they not admirable for use and order? Were those (mis-called erratic) globes ever known to stray in their repeated journeys through the pathless void ? How vivid and radiant is the lustre of the fixed stars! llow magnificent and rich that negligent profusion with jfchich they appear to be scattered throughout the whole azure vault! Yet, if you take the telescope, it brings into your sight a new host of stars that escape the. naked eye. Yet all the vast bodies that compose this mighty frame, how distant and remote soever, are, by some secret mechanism, some divine ar* and force, linked in a mutual dependence and intercourse with each other, even with this earth, which has almost slipped from my thoughts, and been lost in the crowd of worlds. Is not the whole system immense, beautiful,