of thinking of nature--that is, of the things which we can see and handle--only as something of which we can make use--till we fall as low as that poor ruffian, of whom the poet says: A primrose on the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more. Lower, that is, than even our own children, whom God has at least taught to admire and love the primroses for their beauty--as something precious and divine, quite independent of their own emotions about them. Men in these days are but too likely to fall into the humour of those poor savages, of whom one who knows them well said to me once--bitterly but truly--that when a savage sees anything new, however wonderful or beautiful, he has but two thoughts about it; first--Will it hurt me? and next--Can I eat it? And from that truly brutish view of God's world, we shall be delivered, I believe, only by taking in with our whole hearts the teaching of the 104th Psalm; which is indeed the teaching of all Holy Scripture throughout. The Psalmist, in the passage which I have chosen, is talking of the circulation of water on the earth; how wisely and well it is ordered; how the vapours rise off the sea, till the waters stand above the mountain- tops, to be brought down in thunder-storms--for in his country, as in many hot ones, thunder was generally needed, at the end of the dry season, to bring down the rain; how it forms springs in the highland, and flows down from thence in brooks and rivers, making the whole lowland green and fertile. Well--all very true, you may say. But that is simply a matter of science, or indeed of common observation and common sense. It is not a subject for a psalm or for a sermon. True: in the words in which I have purposely put it. But not in the words in which the Psalmist puts it; and which I purposely left out, to shew you just the difference between even the soundest science, and faith. He brings in another element, which is the true cause of the circulation of water; and that is, none other but Almighty God. This is the way in which the inspired Psalmist puts it; and this is the truth of it all; this is the very kernel and marrow and life and soul of it all: while the facts which I told you just now are the mere shell and dead skeleton of it--"_Thou_ sendest the springs into the rivers." Thou art the Lord of the lightning and of the clouds, the Lord of the highlands and of the lowlands, and the Lord of the rainfall and of the drought, the Lord of good seasons and of bad, of rich harvests and of scanty. They, like all things, obey Thine everlasting laws; and of them, whatever may befal, poor purblind man can say in faith and hope--"It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good."