"The starres have us to bed; Night draws the curtain, which the sunne withdraws; Musick and light attend our head. All things unto our flesh are kinde In their descent and being; to our minde In their ascent and cause." The idea is a very natural one, and is consequently as old as man himself. Human vanity is soothed by the reflection that all this varied world, with its countless beauties, has been designed and arrayed solely for the use of man. And yet, if we but think of it, such a view of creation, however natural and pleasing, is at the best but a narrow and selfish one. It assuredly finds no response in nature, and grows more and more out of fashion the further our investigations proceed. Nature teaches us that long ere man appeared upon the earth there were successive generations of living things just as now; that the sun shone, and the waves rolled, and the wind blew, as they do to-day; and that, on as lovely a planet as that whereon we dwell, there lay forests and prairies nursing in abundance animals of long-extinct forms; lakes and rivers, haunted by creatures that find no representatives now; and seas teeming with life, from the minute infusory up to the most unwieldy icthyosaur, or the most gigantic cetacean. And all this, too, ere a reasoning, intelligent being had been numbered among terrestrial creatures, and when, perhaps, each successive creation was witnessed by none save those "morning stars who sang together, and those sons of God who shouted for joy." The delight and comfort of the human race formed, doubtless, one of the many reasons why this globe was so bountifully garnished.[32] But the workmanship of a Being infinitely wise, and good, and powerful, could hardly have been other than complex and beautiful. That symmetry and grace which we see running as a silver thread through every part of creation, forms one of the characteristics of the Almighty's mode of working. From the Fountain of all Beauty nothing unseemly or deformed can proceed. And so we find, away back among the ages of the past, that, though the material world might be less complete, it was not less beautiful than now. Nay, those bygone millenniums stood higher in one respect, for the eye of God rested upon their unsullied glory, and he pronounced them very good; but these last ages of creation are dimmed and darkened, and that Eye now watches a world trodden down by the powers of evil. There is profound truth in the sublime allegory of Milton that represents Sin girt round with clamorous hell-hounds, and the two grisly forms sitting at the farthest verge of purity and light, to keep the gates of darkness and chaos. With the introduction of moral evil into our planet came the elements of deformity and confusion. The geologist can go back to a time ere yet the harmony of nature had been broken. The Christian looks forward to a day when that harmony shall be again restored, and