555 / 674
mrsc.
x.]
THE FORETASTE OF.HE\AVEN.
533
wondrous
words
of
power to every
.
plant
and animal;
"
be
fruitful,
and
multiply,
and replenish
the
earth,"
Gen.
1.
22,
and
lo,
in
a
long succession
of
near
six
.
thousand
years,
the
earth
has
been covered
all
over
with
herbs
and
plants,
with
shrubs and tall
trees, in all
their
beauty
.and
dimensións.
The air hath
been
filled
with
birds and
insects,
the
seas and
rivers
with
fish,
and the
dry land
with beasts
and
men, even to this
present
day.
When
all this philosophy
is
changed
into
devotion,
it
must
also be
transformed into
divine
and unutterable
Joy
"
Nor
are
these things too
low
and mean for
the con
.
templation
of
heavenly beings
;
for
God
is
seen
in
all
of
them
:
there
is
not
a
spire
of
grass
but
the
power and
wisdom
of
a
God
are
visible
therein. And it
is
certain
the heavenly beings must
be
sometimes employed
in
the
contemplation
of
many
of
these lower wonders.
The
plants and
beasts in
desolate
regions, where no
man
in-
habits,
and
in
distant
and foreign oceans and
rivers, where
the fishy
shoals in all
their variety
and númbers,
in
all
their successions
and generations for
near
six
thousand
years,
were
never
seen or known
by
any
of
the
sons
of
men
;
these seem to have been
created
in vain,
if
no
"heavenly
beings
are
acquainted
with them,
nor
raise
a
revenue
of
glory
to him
that
made them.
"
This almighty
power,
therefore,
which
made
this
huge
universe,
which
sustains the frame
of
it
every
moment,
and
secures
it
from
dissolving; this
power,
which
brings
forth the stars
in
their
order, and
worms
and
creeping
things in
their innumerable
millions,
and
governs all
the
motions
of
them to
the purposes
of
divine glory,
must needs
affect a contemplative soul
with
,
raptures of pleasing meditation and
in
these sublime
meditations,
by
the
aids
of
the Divine
Spirit,
a
soul
on
earth may get
near
to heaven.
And with
what
religious
and unknown
pleasure
at
such a season
doth it shrink
its
own being, as
it
were,
into an atom, and
lie in
the
dust
and adore
!"
4.
"
The
all
-
sufficiency
of
the
great God
'to
form
and
to
supply every
creature
with all
that
it
can
want or
desire,"
is
another
perfection
of
the divine
nature,
wh
ch
is
better
known
in
heaven than
it
ever
was
here uup
'
cartl),
and affords
another
scene
of
astonishment
and.
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