Nor can we properly terminate reflections of this order without going back to the source and origin of mind. If the material universe bears witness to the existence and character of a Great First Cause; if “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;” if “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork;” if the earth be full of his goodness; how much more does the soul of man, with all its capacities and powers, its intellect and genius, and, above all, its moral and religious susceptibilities, bear testimony to the being and attributes of the Creator. The marks of design in the mind of man, himself a designer, are more astonishing than those which we have in visible things. The power and beneficence of God, in giving us faculties of thought and susceptibilities of affection, appear with a plainness of expression even beyond what we discover in any of the material provisions for our comfort. While the whole universe is a volume in which God has, as it were, written down his thoughts, what page in it is so wonderful as the human mind? Whatever is great or beautiful in the imagination of man—whatever there is to admire in the works of his hands, fashioned according to the intellectual type within, must be traced up to the infinite source of intelligence, as its origin. Man has nothing which he has not received. What then must that unrevealed fount of beauty be, of which all the choice thoughts and beautiful imaginings of men from the beginning, however they have been expressed, are but as drops and spray! PART II. CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE PAST AND PRESENT. “Fair land, by time’s parental love made free, By social order’s watchful arms embraced:— With unexampled union meet in thee, For eye and mind the present and the past; With golden prospects for futurity, If that be reverenced which ought to last.” WORDSWORTH.