py life, His creation is! Go forth from
inclosing city walls, and, in the summer noontide, stop in solitude and
apparent silence and listen; and soon the sounds of this joyous life shall
come to your ear: the chirp of the insects--the rustle of wings--the
crackling of the leaves, as the blithesome airy creatures pass--the short,
thick warble of the bird by your side, or its varied tune, clearer than
viol or organ, from the thicket beyond--while, from time to time, the deep
low of cattle reverberates from afar. Or if you are where the still and
speechless creatures inhabit, open your eye to gaze and examine, and it
shall be filled with the visible, as the ear with the vocal signs of
living enjoyment. Walking at the edge of the ebbing tide, you tread on
life at every step--shelly tribe on tribe of fish pressing together, while
in the clear water, other tribes noiselessly swim and glide away. Every
vital motion speaks of pleasure, whether in that restless current below,
or in the air above, as the feathered songster passes, darting up and down
his element, delight gushing from his throat at every buoyant
spring--silence and sound, with double demonstration, declaring to the
Creator's praise the great and limitless boon of life.

But there is one accent more, that of love, without which the hymn is not
complete; and there is another human order of Being to speak that accent.
Man includes in himself all the preceding orders of Being, with all the
notes of their praise: the material clod, for is he not made of dust; the
plant, for he has an outward growth and circulation--the animal, for he
has instinct and feeling; while reason and conscience and spiritual
affection he has peculiarly and alone; so that Power, Wisdom, Goodness and
Love, all concentrated in him, complete the ground of his praise.

Yet, as we look out upon this mighty sum of things in the external
universe, the level earth stretching off to some ascending ridge in the
horizon's blue distance--the boundless deep spread afar, till, at the
misty edge of vision it bends, in mingling threefold circles, to embrace
the globe, the impenetrable below and the infinite above him, how slight
and insignificant a creature he seems! like a fly that clings to the
ceiling, or a mote that swims in the sunbeam, one of the mere mites of
nature, easily lost by the way or a frail figure ready to be crushed by
any stroke of the ponderous machinery mid which he moves. When he reflects