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"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and houour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created."-Revelation iv. 11.

THE first truth, which observation fixes upon our minds, is that something exists. Our consciousness assures us of the fact, and we can bave no higher evidence on any point. We soon become aware, that there are other beings in existence besides ourselves, and we learn to regard ourselves as parts of a system. To this system we can discover no limits. If we descend, neither our senses, nor our instruments, nor our reasonings can discover an end. If we ascend, we can reach no point; we can find no boundary.

In prosecuting our researches, we find that one general law pervades all the variety of matter; that law is susceptibility of change. Everything around us exhibits the constant operation of a principle of alteration and decay. Adamantine rocks, the very emblems of stability, are subject to a gradual, but constant decomposition. Vegetable and animal matter, especially, makes rapid advances to dissolution. The heavenly bodies, indeed, do not exhibit signs of decay, but they are subject to a regular and perpetual series of alterations. From this we deduce, that the universe is indebted to some great First Cause for its origin, and is dependent on it for its support. The existence, then, of some great First Cause being evident, reason inquires what that Cause is. Some reply, that it lies in the universe itself; that all things were from eternity as they are now, and that they will continue to go on in the same manner for ever. The absurdity of this opinion will be quickly manifest. To suppose an infinite chain of finite existence, is to imagine what is absurd and contradictory. If the parts are dependent, so must be the whole. Such an opinion carries its own refutation along with it. It is, moreover, contrary to known facts and to observation. All nations have some remembrance of their origin, and are enabled to trace back their existence through an uninterrupted line to nearly the time when man came first into being. Besides, all the arts and comforts and conveniences of life are but of recent discovery and invention, and all combine to show that there was a time when man was not. 3 P

VOL. X.

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Others suppose, that the universe had a beginning, but that it came into existence by chance; that matter, being subject to incessant change and variety, at last arranged itself in its present form. Suppose you were crossing a desert, and were to perceive quite unexpectedly a beautiful palace, built in the highest style of architecture, finished in its minutest parts with the most consummate skill, and replete with every thing calculated to administer to the comfort and happiness of its occupant and suppose on your inquiring the origin of this unexpected mansion, a person were to step forward and gravely tell you that it came "by chance," that the sands of the desert drifting about for many hundred years at last jumbled themselves into their present forma magnificent palace; would you not deem such an assertion an insult to your judgment? But such folly is but a trifle, compared with the madness displayed by those, who give similar reasons for the existence of the universe.

But independently of the manifest absurdity of such opinions, the universe contains proofs of a different origin. We need not go far in order to discover them, for they are abundant.

I. The perfect adaptation of the earth to the wants, the circumstances, and the situations of all its inhabitants. Every animal, from the largest elephant to the minutest insect, has a place of residence provided for it, entirely suited to its wants and its pleasures. The seas of the frigid zone, where the cold is insupportable to man, are peopled with huge monsters; and the torrid zone, where the heat would be thought to be insufferable, is inhabited by animals, which find there a climate exactly suited to their convenience.

II. The conformity of the various members and organs of vegetables and animals to their respective uses. In the bones of animals are found holes and grooves for the passage for the nerves and important blood-vessels. Moreover no part will supply the place of another. Each has its own office to perform, and for that alone is it calculated; except, indeed, that when by some casualty a person is deprived of one of his members, God has endowed the others with a wonderful power of accommodating themselves to the necessity of the case, so that, although they cannot absolutely supply the place of the absent limb, they will considerably alleviate the inconvenience resulting from its loss.

III. All the animals of the same species have a resemblance to each other, yet there are no two individuals exactly alike. Here is general uniformity joined with incessant diversity.

IV. Every part of the great whole keeps its own proper place, and exhibits no tendency to interfere with another. Harmony is a universal law.

V. Let us take a view of the heavenly bodies. The mind is lost in the infinity of worlds. Yet they all move in a regular, precise, and unerring course, by the operation of a simple, plain, and general cause. The attraction of gravitation is that cause. It is conjoined with another force originally imparted to them by their Creator, giving them a tendency to move in a straight line. These forces combined cause them to revolve in their regular appointed course. Let us consider a few particulars respecting the heavenly bodies.

1. The magnitude of the system. It is so great, that the mind is lost in its contemplation. Let us reflect on the speed with which the planets move. The earth moves in her orbit at the rate of a million and a half miles in twenty-four hours; and this is not equal to the velocity of some of the other planets.

2. The planets all move in the same direction.

3. Their distance from each other is great; but were it less, the harmony of their motions would be destroyed. Their mutual attraction would prevent their attaining their proper course, and would introduce confusion into the system.

4. The moon, during her revolution on her axis, always keeps the same side toward the earth. This she accomplishes, by performing her revolution round the earth and that on her own axis in exactly the same time. This holds good with respect to the satellites of the other planets.

5. Although the distance of the planets from each other is so great, yet some irregularity in their course, resulting from mutual attraction, does take place. Undoubtedly this serves some important end, though to us unknown. For example

the inclination of the earth to the plane of its orbit is continually decreasing; and consequently is continually approaching to that state, in which we should have no variety of seasons. We need not, however, give ourselves any uneasiness on that account, for, long before we shall have felt any inconvenience resulting therefrom, the axis of the earth will gradually go back again to its former position, from the operation of another of the disturbing causes to which we have alluded. 6. The coincidence in effects resulting from totally different causes. In the revolution of the moon this is very observable; a coincidence being observed in effects resulting from the operation of three totally distinct causes.

VI. Our intellectual powers. Although atheism is so absurd, and so comfortless a doctrine, it is not without its advocates; and it is well to be armed against their insidious attacks.

From all these reasons, then, it appears, that matter was not from all eternity, and, moreover, that the universe was not the result or production of chance, inasmuch as every part bears testimony to the operation of Infinite wisdom and consummate skill. Let it beremembered, that God was under no necessity to create the universe. It was the result of His own free choice. No other reason can be given than that "it seemed good in His sight." His sovereign will was the sole cause. Whenever we search into the works of creation, new wonders continually arise. The microscope has discovered to us animals so small, that hundreds of them could play on the point of a pin. Besides, it is conformable to the general law of nature to suppose, that, if their blood were exposed to the air for a sufficient time, other animalculæ would be produced from it. Nor is there any reason to decide, that there do not exist animaculæ, as much smaller than they, as they are than the elephant.

If we ascend in the scale, we find wonders equally overpowering. The planetary worlds around us seem to intimate the existence of other orders of beings. There are, doubtless, beings in existence, far superior to ourselves. Reason renders it more than probable; and revelation assures us of the fact. In all probability their number and variety infinitely exceed those of the animals below man.

In the heavenly bodies a boundless field of contemplation opens itself. Their number and extent overwhelm the mind, and baffle our powers of conception. Sir William Herschell made many discoveries by means of his telescope. As to the number of the stars, it may be mentioned, that 258,000 passed over the field of his telescope, in one minute of time. An example of their distance may be mentioned; Sir William Herschell singled out a speck from a nebulous spot in the heavens, and calculated that its light, moving at the rate of 2,000 miles in a second, must have taken nearly two millions of years in reaching our globe.

The contemplation of the wonders of creation is admirably calculated to impress man with a due sense of his own insignificance. All that we know on this subject just suffices to show us how much remains unknown. How astonishing is it that God, the omnipotent Creator of all these wondrous works, should condescend to become our Father and our Friend! Well may we exclaim-" Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him! and the son of man, that Thou visitest him!"

THE TRIUMPH OF MISSIONS.

BY DR. CHALMERS.*

HAD the members of some school of philosophy, by dint of a skilful and laborious analysis, become profoundly conversant with the mysteries of the human spirit-had they speculated, with accuracy and effect, not merely on the progress of an individual mind from its first rude and unformed elements to the highest finish of its moral and intellectual cultivation, but also on the progress of the collective mind in society, so as to trace all the continuous footsteps, by which the transition is made from savage to civilized life—had they, on the principle of their

In our Number for April (see page 145), we extracted from Dr. Chalmers's works an essay on the Philosophy of Missions. A Volume of his Works, which has just appeared (the Twelfth), enables us to complete the subject, by extracting part of an Essay on "the Necessity of uniting Prayer with Performance for the Success of Missions." The two essays, which now enrich our pages, constitute by far the most splendid pleading in behalf of Missions, that our language can furnish.

new system, devised a path of tuition, and instituted a method of discipline, and framed a book of elementary doctrine and scholarship, in virtue of which they held themselves prepared for a grand philosophic experiment on some remote island of barbarians, yet in the ferocity and primitive ignorance of nature—had they been able so to interest the public in their scheme, as to be upheld by them in all the cost of a benevolent expedition, and then set forth on the wide ocean of adventure, till they reached a far distant and solitary shore, that was peopled by an untaught tribe of idolators, where all the arts, and habits, and decencies of Europe were unknown, and where some hideous misshapen sculpture bespoke a paganism of the coarsest and most revolting character-had they, in these circumstances, offered parley with the natives, and gained their confidence, and won such an ascendancy, as that they could assemble and detain them at pleasure, for the purposes of education, and, furnished as they were by an enlightened metaphysics with the best and fittest lessons for men in the infancy of understanding, had they brought their well-weighed processes to bear upon them—had they got pupils from among all their families, and, in twenty years, wrought a change more marvellous than twenty centuries rolling over the head of many tribes and nations of our world have been able to accomplish--in a word, had they transformed this horde of cannibals into a lettered and humanised peasantry, and, instead of the cruelties of their old and haggerd superstition, trained them to the peaceful charities of this world and to the rejoicing hopes of another—had they been further enabled to grace the whole of this exhibition by such pleasing and picturesque accompaniments, as those of newly-formed villages, and cultivated gardens and prosperous industry, and the whole costume of industrious and well-regulated life, and all this on the part of a people, who, but a few years before, were prowling in nakedness, and with fierce and untamed spirit could assemble in delighted multitudes around the agonies of a human sacrifice-an achievement so wonderful as this, would have been blazoned forth to the world as one of the noblest triumphs of philosophy! It would have filled and dazzled the whole of our literary republic; and her academies would have vied with each other in heaping their orders and their honorary titles on the men, who had found out that specific charm, by which to reclaim the wilds of humanity, and to quicken a hundred-fold the march and improvement of our species.

Now it is not very many years ago, since such an enterprise was set on foot by the members of a certain college, though not a college of literati; and they carried out with them a certain book of instructions, though not one philosopher had to do with the composition of it; and they made the very attempt which we have specified, on a territory removed, by some thousands of miles, from the outskirts of civilization; and through a severe ordeal of ridicule and of reverses did they ply their assiduous task, and have now brought their experiment to its termination; and, whatever the steps of their process may have been, there is many an eye-witness who can speak to the result of it. The island of Otaheite, which teemed with the worst abominations of savage passion and savage cruelty, was the selected arena on which they tried the virtue of their peculiar specific. And whatever the rationale of its operation may have been, there is no doubt as to the certainty of the operation itself. The savages have been humanised. The rude and hideous characteristics of the savage state have all disappeared. A nation of gross and grovelling idolators has become a nation of rational, and kindred, and companionable men; and furnished as they now are with a written language, and having access, by authorship and correspondence, to other minds and other countries than their own, does the light of Christendom now shine full upon their territory. And it is, indeed, a wondrous transformation-to look at their now modest attire, and their now sweet and comfortable habitations, and their village-schools, and their new-formed alphabet, and a boyhood just taught and practised like our own in the various branches of scholarship, and, (what poetry, perhaps, even though apart from religion, would most fondly seize upon of all,) the holiness of their Sabbath morn, and the chime of its worship-bell, now breaking for the first time on the ear of the delighted mariner, who hovers upon their shore, and recognized by him as a sound that was before unheard throughout the whole of that vast Pacific, in the solitude of whose mighty waters this island had

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