with a clear and perfect understanding, as to what we ought, and what we ought not to expect from the discoveries of Natural Philosophy, we may strenuously pursue our labours in the fruitful fields of Science, under the full assurance that we shall gather a rich and abundant harvest, fraught with endless evidences of the existence, and wisdom, and power, and goodness of the Creator.
"The Philosopher (says Professor Babbage) has conferred on the Moralist an obligation of surpassing weight; in unveiling to him the living miracles which teem in rich exuberance around the minutest atom, as well as through the largest masses of ever active matter, he has placed before him resistless evidence of immeasurable design."[1]
"See only (says Lord Brougham) in what contemplations the wisest of men end their most sublime inquiries! Mark where it is that a Newton finally reposes after piercing the thickest veil that envelopes nature—grasping and arresting in their course the most subtle of her elements and the swiftest—traversing the regions of boundless space—exploring worlds beyond the solar way—giving out the law which binds the universe in eternal order! He rests, as by an inevitable necessity, upon the contemplation of the great First Cause, and holds it his highest glory to have made the evidence of his existence, and the dispensations of his power and of his wisdom better understood by men."[2]
If then it is admitted to be the high and peculiar privilege of our human nature, and a devotional exercise of our most exalted faculties, to extend our thoughts towards Immensity and into Eternity, to gaze on the marvellous Beauty that pervades the material world, and to comprehend that Witness of himself; which the Author of the Universe has set before us in the visible works of his Creation; it is clear that next to the study of those distant worlds which engage the contemplation of the Astronomer, the largest and most sub-
