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AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

Of all the works on Natural Theology, which, in former or recent times, have enlightened and delighted the pious mind, none of any great extent, or of much importance, have been devoted to the illustration of the Divine perfections, in connexion with the Seasons of the Year. Yet this is a view at once interesting and popular. The changes of the seasons display, in themselves, a remarkable and beneficent arrangement; and the adaptations by which vegetable and animal life are fitted to exist, and to fulfil the end of their creation, during these changes, afford ample materials for a beautiful and striking exhibition of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator.

In investigating this subject, we meet every where also, with the most remarkable analogies in the character of the material world, with that which is so distinctly impressed on Revealed Truth; and, while we hence derive a very satisfactory argument in proof of their origin from the same Almighty and Intelligent Author, we find, that these kindred sources of information continually throw a light, clear, consistent, and useful on each other.

The attention of scientific men, while it has of late been very successfully, has, perhaps, been too exclusively, directed to the book of Nature, in illustration of the Divine perfections; and those, who peruse their writings, may be induced to overlook the highly important truth, that, after all, natural religion affords but an imperfect glimpse into the moral attributes of the Eternal.

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