ildren
gathering a few pebbles, upon the shore of an illimitable sea. In
every woodland, too, innumerable fungi are at work, raising from the
lower soil rich substances, which, strewed on the surface by quick
decay, will form food for plants higher than themselves; while they,
by their variety and beauty, both of form and colour, might well
form studies for any painter, and by the obscure laws of their
reproduction, studies for any philosopher. Why, there is not a heap
of dead leaves among which by picking it through carefully you might
not find some twenty species of delicate and elegant land-shells;
hardly a tree-foot at which, among the moss and mould, you might not
find the chrysalides of beautiful moths, where caterpillars have
crawled down the trunk in autumn, to lie there self-buried and die
to live again next spring in a new and fairer shape. And if you
cannot reach even there, go to the water-but in the nearest yard,
and there, in one pinch of green scum, in one spoonful of water,
behold a whole "Divina Commedia" of living forms, more fantastic a
thousand times than those with which Dante peopled his unseen world:
and then feel, as you should feel, abashed at the ignorance and
weakness of mortal man; abashed still more at that rash conceit of
his, which makes him fancy himself the measure of all things; and
say with me: "Oh Lord, thy works are manifold; thy ways are very
deep. In wisdom hast thou made them all, the earth is full of thy
riches. Thou openest thy hand, and fillest all things living with
plenteousness; they continue this day according to thine ordinance,
for all things serve thee. Thou hast made them fast for ever and
ever; thou hast given them a law which shall not be broken. Let
them praise the name of the Lord; for he spake the word and they
were made, he commanded, and they were created."

This I shall say, but little more than this, on the religious effect
of the study of natural history. I do not wish to preach a sermon
to you. I can trust God's world to bear better witness than I can,
of the Loving Father who made it. I thank him from my own
experience for the testimony of His Creation, only next to the
testimony of His Bible. I have watched scientific discoveries which
were supposed in my boyhood to be contrary to revelation, found out
one by one to confirm and explain revelation, as crude and hasty
theories were corrected by more abundant facts, and men saw more
clearly what