LESSON CXLII.

1 BEAR, one of two constellations in the northern hemisphere, called respectively the Greater and Lesser Bear, or Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

2O RION, a large and bright constellation, crossed by the equinoctial line.

WH

TIMES AND SEASONS.

L. H. GRINDON.

HILE, to the poet and thoughtful man, the changes of times and seasons are in the highest degree beautiful and suggestive, even to the most indifferent and selfish they are surrounded with an agreeable interest. None view their progress without regard, however little they may be attracted by their sweet pictures and phenomena, or moved by the amenities and wisdom of their ministry. This is because the changes incidental to Nature are, on the one hand, a kind of counterpart or image of the occurrences and vicissitudes of human life; and on the other, the circumstances by which its business and pleasures are, in large measure, suggested and controlled.

2. The consummation of the old year, and the opening of the new, brings with it, accordingly, a fine significance, and a pleasurable importance. So, in their degree, the transitions of winter into spring, of spring into summer, of summer into autumn; and so, in their degree, the alternations of day and night. The longer the interval, the more interesting is the change.

3. The close of the year occupies the foremost place in this universal interest, from its completing a well-defined and comprehensive cycle of natural mutations. It is by this circumstance rendered an appropriate epoch for the measurement of life and being; and hence there fasten on

it peculiar momentousness and solemnity, which remain inseparably attached, though the season be unknown or forgotten. Days and nights follow too rapidly to serve such a purpose.

4. Only as the result of these mutations does the year exist. Were there no primroses to die with the spring, no lilies to vanish with the summer, were there no sequences of the leaf and flower, sunshine and starlight, there would even be no time. For time, like space, pertains but to the material circumference of creation, that is, to the visible half of the universe, and is only appreciable through its medium. It is by objective nature alone that the ideas both of time and space are furnished; and they are sustained in us only so long as we are in contact with it.

5. The movements of the heavenly bodies contribute the most exact and obvious data, because expressly given "for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." But the heavens are not our only timepiece. Another is spread over the surface of the earth in its living products. The phenomena connected with plants, and the habits of the lower animals, constitute in themselves a complete system of chronometry; indicating not merely seasons, but even days and hours.

6. In the times of the leafing of the trees, the blooming of flowers, the ripening of fruits, the appearance of insects, the singing and nest-building of birds, the departure and return of the migratory kinds, and of every other incident of unmolested Nature, there is nothing chanceful or uncertain. Every event transpires at a fixed point in the series of changes to which it belongs.

7. Celestial and atmospheric phenomena, if they have

* Genesis, 1st chap., 14th verse.

fewer of the charms of variety, in their splendors compensate it tenfold. How beautiful to note the phases of the moon, the chameleon-tinting of the sky, the traveling of the planets, and the circling round the pole of the seven bright stars of the sleepless Bear1! With what gladness, and enthusiasm too, in the cold, inanimate winter, we view the rising Orion,2 and his brilliant quarter of the heavens! The cheerlessness of the earth is forgotten in the magnificence overhead, and we thank God for unfolding such glory.

8. Every event, moreover, having its own poetical relations, at once refreshes the heart, and places before the mind some elegant item in the innumerable harmonies of the universe. In the perpetual sparkle of the Bear is presented an image of the ever-wakeful eye of Providence ; and in the alternate waxing and waning of the moon, a beautiful picture of the oscillations in man's fortune.

9. The regularity with which the phenomena of Nature recur, and their determinate and unvarying character, are expressed in many names. Spring is literally the season of growth; the summer, that of sunshine; autumn, that of increase or fertility; winter, that of the " windy storm and tempest." Times, years, seasons, accordingly, are not to be esteemed a part of creation, but simply an accident, or result of it.

10. Our personal experiences concur with Nature in testifying this; for to no two men has time the same duration, nor does any individual reckon it always by the same dial. To the slothful, time has the feet of a snail; to the diligent, the wings of an eagle. Impatience lengthens, enjoyment shortens it. The unhappy and desolate see nothing but weary tedium: with the cheerful, it glides like a

stream.

LESSON CXLIII.

EARTH, AIR, AND SEA.

MAURY.

HE mean annual fall of rain on the entire surface of

THE

the earth is estimated at about five feet. To evaporate water enough annually from the ocean to cover the earth, on the average, five feet deep with rain; to transport it from one zone to another, and to precipitate it in the right places, at suitable times, and in the proportions due, — is one of the offices of the grand atmospherical machine. All this evaporation, however, does not take place from the sea; for the water that falls on the land is re-evaporated from the land again and again.

2. But, in the first instance, it is evaporated principally from the torrid zone. Supposing it all to be evaporated thence, we shall have, encircling the earth, a belt of ocean three thousand miles in breadth, from which this atmosphere raises a layer of water annually sixteen feet in depth. And to raise as high as the clouds, and lower down again, all the water in a lake sixteen feet deep, and three thousand miles broad, and twenty-four thousand long, is the yearly business of this invisible machinery. What a powerful engine is the atmosphere! and how nicely adjusted must be all the cogs, and wheels, and springs, and compensations of this exquisite piece of machinery, that it never wears out nor breaks down, nor fails to do its work at the right time and in the right way!

3. We now begin to perceive why it is that the proportions between the land and water were made as we find them in Nature. If there had been more water, and less land, we should have had more rain, and vice versâ ; * and

*The terms being exchanged.

then climates would have been different from what they are now, and the inhabitants, animals, and vegetables would not have been as they are. But that wise Being, who in His kind providence so watches over and regards the things of this world that He takes note of the sparrow's fall and numbers the very hairs of our head, doubtless designed them to be as they are.

4. The mind is delighted, and the imagination charmed, by contemplating the physical arrangements of the earth from such points of view as this which we now have before us. From it the sea, and the air, and the land, appear each as a part of that grand machinery upon which the well-being of all the inhabitants of earth, sea, and air, depends; and which, in its beautiful adaptations, affords new and striking evidence that they all have their origin in one omniscient idea, just as the different parts of a watch may be considered to have been constructed and arranged according to one human design.

5. Whenever we turn to contemplate the works of Nature, we are struck with the admirable system of compensation, with the beauty and nicety with which every department is adjusted, adapted, and regulated according to the others. Things and principles are meted out in directions apparently the most opposite, but in proportions so exactly balanced, that results the most harmonious are produced. It is by the action of opposite and compensating forces that the earth is kept in its orbit, and the stars are held suspended in the azure vault of heaven; and these forces are so exquisitely adjusted, that, at the end of a thousand years, the earth, the sun, and moon, and every star in the firmament, is found to come and twinkle in its proper place at the proper moment!

6. Therefore, in considering the general laws which gov