it were upon an heap, and layeth up the deep, as in a treasure-house. Let the earth fear the Lord: stand in awe of Him, all ye that dwell in the world. For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” {168c} And he breaks forth in the devout hymn of the Psalmist; “Praise the Lord, oh my soul: oh Lord my God, Thou art become exceeding glorious: Thou art clothed with majesty and honour. Thou deckest Thyself with light, as it were with a garment: and spreadest out the heavens like a curtain. Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, and maketh the clouds His chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind.” When philosophy is thus sanctified by Christianity, the volume of nature presents, after the volume of inspiration, the most instructive and delightful study of man; in both he can read, as if written by a sun-beam, the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of the Most High. Would, then, any wish to debar others from the high intellectual feast which nature bountifully spreads before all, and of which she pressingly invites all to partake? Such would be to limit or to divert the streams of Divine bounty, whilst flowing in their proper channels: such would be to make a monopoly of one of heaven’s best and freest gifts to man, whilst a pilgrim in this world of woe,—the admonitions which nature addressing to the enlightened and thoughtful mind, “Leads it upward to a brighter day.” Would any say, Gaze as long as you like upon the beauties and wonders of nature, but attempt not to explore its hidden secrets—to examine the latent springs of its vast and complicated machinery? Such would be, as if a man possessing a curious and exquisite piece of mechanism were to direct the observers to remark the beauty of the material, the regularity of the movements, and the certainty of the results, and yet to forbid them to examine into the principle of construction and the mode of operation, on which those movements and that certainty depend. For the proportion, in which he who has studied the structure of the globe, the wonderful mechanism of the universe, as far as Revelation and reason have enabled men to go, derives from its contemplation greater enjoyment and instruction than he who treads the earth, traverses the seas, and gazes upon the heavens, ignorant of all philosophy can teach, is the same as that in which he who understands mechanics receives greater pleasure and information, than he who understands them not, from examining the process of a masterly application of the powers of that science.