Is not this part of the grand principle of the universe?--the eternal cycle
of reproduction and decay, pervading all and every thing--blindly
contributed to by the folly and wickedness of man! "So far shalt thou go,
but no further," was the fiat; and, arrived at the prescribed limit, we
must commence again. At this moment intellect has seized upon the
seven-league boots of the fable, which fitted everybody who drew them on,
and strides over the universe. How soon, as on the decay of the Roman
empire, may all the piles of learning which human endeavours would rear as
a tower of Babel to scale the heavens, disappear, leaving but fragments to
future generations, as proofs of pre-existent knowledge! Whether we refer
to nature or to art, to knowledge or to power, to accumulation or
destruction, bounds have been prescribed which man can never pass, guarded
as they are by the same unerring and unseen Power, which threw the planets
from his hand, to roll in their appointed orbits. All appears confused
below, but all is clear in heaven.

I have somewhere heard it said, that wherever heaven may be, those who
reach it will behold the mechanism of the universe in its perfection. Those
stars, now studding the firmament in such apparent confusion, will there
appear in all their regularity, as worlds revolving in their several
orbits, round suns which gladden them with light and heat, all in harmony,
all in beauty, rejoicing as they roll their destined course in obedience to
the Almighty fiat; one vast, stupendous, and, to the limits of our present
senses, incomprehensible mechanism, perfect in all its parts, most
wonderful in the whole. Nor do I doubt it: it is but reasonable to suppose
it. He that hath made this world and all upon it can have no limits to His
power.

I wonder whether I shall ever see it.

I said just now, let us think. I had better have said, let us not think;
for thought is painful, even dangerous when carried to excess. Happy is he
who thinks but little, whose ideas are so confined as not to cause the
intellectual fever, wearing out the mind and body, and often threatening
both with dissolution. There is a happy medium of intellect, sufficient to
convince us that all is good--sufficient to enable us to comprehend that
which is revealed, without a vain endeavour to pry into the hidden; to
understand the one, and lend our faith unto the other; but when the mind
would soar unto the heaven not opened to it, or di