ing passion--if anything so cold may be
called _a passion_--for the reduction of all things to the forms of the
understanding, a declension which has prepared the way for the present
worship of science, and its refusal, if not denial, of all that cannot be
proved in forms of the intellect.

The hymn which has led to these remarks is still good, although, like the
loveliness of the red and lowering west, it gives sign of a gray and
cheerless dawn, under whose dreariness the child will first doubt if his
father loves him, and next doubt if he has a father at all, and is not a
mere foundling that Nature has lifted from her path.

The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue etherial sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun from day to day
Does his Creator's power display;
And publishes to every land
The work of an almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale;
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing as they shine:
"The hand that made us is divine."

The very use of the words _spangled_ and _frame_ seems--to my fancy only,
it may be--to indicate a tendency towards the unworthy and theatrical.
Yet the second stanza is lovely beyond a doubt; and the whole is most
artistic, although after a tame fashion. Whether indeed the heavenly
bodies _teach_ what he says, or whether we should read divinity worthy of
the name in them at all, without the human revelation which healed men, I
doubt much. That divinity is there--_Yes_; that we could read it there
without having seen the face of the Son of Man first, I think--_No_. I do
not therefore dare imagine that no revelation dimly leading towards such
result glimmered in the hearts of God's chosen amongst Jews and Gentiles
before he came. What I say is, that power and order, although of God, and
preparing the way for him, are not his revealers unto men. No doubt King
David compares the perfection of God's law to the glory of the