PAGE XIII. SUNDAY.-The Deluge a Divine Judgement, Cuvier's Calculations respecting the Deluge, Effects of the Deluge on the Present Surface of the Earth, 365 SACRED PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEASONS. WINTER. FIRST WEEK-SUNDAY. GOODNESS OF GOD TO HIS RATIONAL CREATURES. We are about to commence a course of study which will lay before us, in detail, abundant proofs of beneficent design, exhibited in the various departments of creation; and we surely cannot better employ this first day of the first week of our delightful and edifying task, than in considering some of the more obvious and general evidences of the paternal regard, which the Creator bestows on our race-the chief of his sublunary works. But the difficulty lies in knowing where to begin, and what to select ; for we cannot turn in any direction where His love does not smile around us. In Him we live, and move, and have our being; and all that we possess flows entirely from the exhaustless source of His bounty. From the first moment of our existence, His guardian arm surrounded us, and at this instant we are the objects of His providential care. He listened to our helpless cries, and supplied all our infant wants, before our fluttering hearts had learned to acknowledge their benefactor, or our lisping tongues to pronounce His name. It was He who opened the bosoms of our parents to impressions of tenderness, and taught them to experience a nameless delight in those little attentions which our tender years VOL. I. A required. To secure the good offices of the generous, He clothed our countenances in the smiles of innocence; and, to soften the hearts of the cruel, He caused our eyes to overflow with tears. He strengthened our bodies and enlarged our minds. Through all the slippery paths of youth His hand unseen conducted us, guarding us from temptation, delivering us from danger, and crowning our days with His goodness. And whatever period of life we have now reached, we owe our continued lives to His preserving care, and our blessings, both past and present, to His paternal bounty. Let us look at particulars. If we turn to our connection with surrounding nature, it is God's air which we breathe, and God's sun that enlightens us. The grateful vicissitudes of day and night, the revolutions of the seasons, and regular return of summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, are all appointed by His unerring wisdom. It is His pencil which paints the flower, and His fragrance which it exhales. By His hand the fields are clothed in beauty, and caused to teem with plenty. At His command the mountains rose, the valleys sank, and the plains were stretched out. His seas surround our coasts, and His winds blow, to waft to us the treasures of distant lands, and to extend the intercourse of man with man. But we are made capable of more exalted enjoyments than can be derived from external nature; and He, who formed us with these capacities, has not left us without the means of exercising them. Originally created in the image of God, the human soul, though apostate, fallen, and degraded, still retains the embers, as it were, of the fire which came down from heaven to animate it; and, as if conscious of its celestial origin, finds permanent enjoyment only in the cultivation of those faculties which prove its resemblance to its Creator. Nor has the Father of mercies left us without the means of such enjoyment. In society, the pleasures of beneficence and the movements of compassion; in friendship, the interchange of good offices, and the balm of sympathy; in domestic life, the tenderness of conjugal affection, and the endearments of filial and parental duty; and, to crown all, in religion, the sublime employments of devotion, and the blessed hopes of immortality, give an unspeakable charm to existence, and prove the Divine Being who bestowed these gifts, to be full of condescending kindness to his rational offspring. It is true, however, that we derive a taint from our first parents which blights all these blessings, and that, so long as we remain in our natural state of alienation and rebellion, an unexpiated curse rests upon our heads. But here it is especially that the bounty of the Eternal is displayed. Man indeed was expelled from paradise, and the fair world, of which he had proved himself unworthy, was rendered suitable to his fallen condition. But it was not the will of God that the human race should be abandoned to perish in their misery; and, while His justice executed the merited sentence, His mercy gave assurance of future deliverance, and 66 'Hope, the charmer, lingered still behind." Nothing can be conceived more beneficent or more wonderful than that scheme of Divine grace revealed to us in the Gospel of Christ, by which apparent contradictions are reconciled; by which a holy God is rendered propitious to the unholy, and a just God becomes "the justifier of the ungodly;" by which sin is punished, and yet the sinner is not only suffered to escape, but is advanced to a higher grade in the scale of existence, and crowned with eternal blessings! That, for the accomplishment of this most astonishing scheme of mercy, God should send his own Son into the world, " in the likeness of sinful flesh;" that this uncreated Being, becoming a creature, should tabernacle on earth, and pass through the various stages of human life, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; that he should come to his own, and his own should reject and despise him; nay more, that sinful men should be permitted to lay their impious hands on the "Lord of Life," and put him to a cruel and igno A 2 minious death; and that all these mysterious transactions should be the means of removing the impassable gulph which our sins had placed between heaven and earth, and of opening a new way to the regions of immortal felicity, marked by the track of his bleeding feet, these are events, the high import and matchless grace of which, angels desire to look into, and the human intellect is too feeble adequately to conceive. When the believer thinks of them, his heart overflows with gratitude, and the deep emotion which they excite finds no language more suitable for its expression, than the short, but emphatic exclamation of an apostle, "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift!" FIRST WEEK-MONDAY. THE CHARACTER IMPRESSED ON NATURE-COMPENSATION. BEFORE proceeding to the examination of particulars, with the view of exhibiting the attributes of the great Creator, as manifested in the seasons of the year, it seems to be of importance to discover the nature of the principles which are to form the subject of our investigation; more particularly, as there is certainly something very remarkable in the character impressed on the created objects within the sphere of our observation. Were we to commence the inquiry without the aid of experience, founding our expectations on the abstract theories of perfection which we might form in the closet, we should assuredly meet with difficulties and disappointments at every step of our progress. We shall in vain seek for proofs of absolute perfection, either in the physical or moral condition of this lower world. It is a scene of perpetual change; of beauty, ending in deformity; of pleasure, succeeded by pain; of success, giving way to disappointment; of life, vigour, and brightness, alter |