Sgt) MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. other half waits the return of the sun, to spread the saine triumph over the southern world. This very sun in the firmament is God's prime minister in this wondrous world of beings, and he works with sovereign vigour on the surface of the earth, and spreads his influences deep under the clods to every root and fibre, moulding them into their proper forms, by divine direction. There is not a plant, nor a leaf; nor one little branching thread, above or beneath the ground, that escapes the eye or influence of this beneficent star: An illustrious emblem of the omnipresence and universal activity of the Creator. But has this all-wise Creator, this supreme Lord of all nature, no intellectual prime- minister at all in these his domini- ons ? Has he delegated all his powers to that bulky globe of fire which we call the sun, that inanimate and unthinking mass of matter ? Is this huge burning and senseless body commissioned to penetrate every dark cranny of nature, either with its light or heat, and to animate every atom in the vegetable and animal kingdoms ; and yet no intellectual being, no spirit so much a -kin to God, as to be favoured with the like extensive vicegerency ? 'Though the light of reason does not tell his name, yet has not revelation informed us? Yes, surely, there is a man after God's own heart, the fairest image of the Creator, and nearest a -kin to him, among all the works of his hands : There is a man, and his name is Jesus, who holds most intimate and' personal union with the godhead, in whom all divine wisdom dwells bodily, and to his care has the Father committed all the infinite varieties of the vegetable and animal worlds. By him are all those won - ders produced in the course of providence, as by an under -agent in the kingdom of nature. Is not the government of heaven and earth put into his hands ? Is lie not made Lord of principali- ties and powers, of men, angels, and devils, and of all their works? And can we think that he has been denied the govern- ment of the lower parts of his Father's workmanship ? Does he not manage all things in the world of grace? Surely then we may infer, he rules as wisely and as spaciously in the upper and lower regions of the creation, as an intellectual and conscious instrument of the providence of his Father, God. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. I and my Father are One. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honour, and glory and power, be to him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever."Amen. VIII. Divine Goodness in the Creation. THOSÈ authors have been very entertaining to me, who have taken a survey of the wisdom of God in the works of nature ; such are the reverend and pious Mr. Ray, in his treatise on that subject; Mr. Derham, in his two volumes written on that di-
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