his paternal care, though in various degrees, are manifest-the moral world, as well as the natural, being subject to partial and transient shades-but, in all their changes, bearing, more or less, the same celestial signature of wisdom and benevolence,—and never utterly abandoned by the great Parent mind-the unchangeable and everlasting Fountain of Light and Happiness.

SERMON XII.

THE WONDERS OF CREATION.

PSALM Civ. 24.-0 Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all.

AFTER contemplating the Heavens, lighted up at the beginning, in all their grandeur and beauty; the earth, as first emerging from its watery mantle; its valleys sinking and hills aspiring; the ocean hastening to its depths and caverns; and the new born face of Nature waving with woods, streaming with rivers, smiling with corn and herbage for man and beast; every different region teeming with

life in every variety of form; and Man, endued with reason and intelligence, placed at the head;-well might the Psalmist exclaim, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works!"

In the following discourse, I shall endeavour to pursue the same train of reflection which led to this natural exclamation of wonder and praise; an exclamation joyfully re-echoed, from age to age, by all considerate spectators of the stupendous monuments of Infinite Wisdom and Benevolence.

Whether from ancient tradition of the gradual subsidence of the waters, or observation of the superior ponderousness of the element of earth; the Psalmist describes our globe, in its primeval aspect, covered with the deep "as with a garment;" the waters "standing above the mountains:"-had not therefore the hand of Omnipotence formed those vast and profound cavities, into which the waters have subsided, this globe would

have presented the face of one immense and shoreless ocean; would have been encom◄ passed with water, as it is with air: but it was necessary for the subsistence of the living inhabitants, that the circumfusion of the waters should be only partial, and that of air, universal; the same hand, therefore, which con, fined the sea within rocks and mounds; which it caumot pass; and caused the dry land to appear, and peopled it with living souls, has comprehended both sea and land within the light transparent fluid of the atmosphere; whence all living creatures draw the breath of life; and embosomed in which the vast volumes of vapours, exhaled by the sun's heat, from the briny ocean, in purity and freshnessthen wafted by the winds from region to region-not only visit the plains and vallies with soft dews and fertilising showers, but deposit in the heart of mountains abundance of sweet waters; which, after trickling through their meandering veins, gush forth in crystal springs, swell into brooks, and roll back, in united and