mountains: thus far can he go, but no further! He launches into infinite space, which Job here calls "the empty place," and is lost! Those lights that sparkle at distances so immense, may, or may not, be suns, and the centres of other systems. All is uncertainty and perplexity; and the comet that shoots across the system of which our own world is a part, wheels through its orbits, and round the sun, flies off, and derides the efforts of man, to describe its sphere, or to foretel its return! "Lo, these are parts of his ways!"

Human ingenuity and human courage have been exhausted in reiterated attempts to approach the poles: but life cannot be sustained among their horrors. The spark of existence is quenched amid snows that never melt: ices, that resist the impression of the sun's distant rays: a winter that never ceases to rage: a cold that freezes the vitals! And if the man were able to reach these extremities of the globe, what could he learn more than Job ascertained thousands of years back: that "he stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing:" that having suspended the globe, and drawn its orbit, it hangs self-sustained, as human skill could not balance a feather. Philosophy needs poles to explain its revolutions; and imagination must be assisted by supposing a line drawn through the globe and extended obliquely to the north star: these things the contraction of our powers require science to supply, that we may comprehend more easily the laws of nature: but he who made the world gave it not these encumbrances, and it is poised in empty space, without any support but his command. "Lo, these are parts of his ways."

He who spends his life in scrutinizing the minutia of nature is puzzled at every step of his investigation;

and in the open fields understands as little of the unsearchable God, as the astronomer who wanders bewildered among the planets. A blade of grass, an ear of wheat, an acorn, plunges him into difficulties, from which neither reason nor philosophy can extricate him. He knows not how that diminutive and spiral leaf, upon which he tramples, grows and vegetates! Why must that grain of corn die, before it can spring up? And how is it, that a particle in it no larger than an atom, the only particle that survives the corruption of the grain, will multiply, and increase, and produce "thirty, sixty, an hundred fold?" How inconceivable that an insignificant acorn should contain all the component principles of a stately oak, the pride of the forest! In fact, a particle of sand, and a drop of water, are replete with subjects of curiosity and of wonder. The air which we breathe, refuses to submit the whole of its properties to our researches. In vain it is attempted to be exhausted, compressed, tortured-it is understood to be elastic, to rest with an incredible pressure upon the surface of the body equally on all parts, and we cannot press the matter further. He who bestowed it alone can make the thin fluid which the lungs inhale to sustain life, the vehicle of death: and he can heighten its rarification to a pitch too subtile for the organs adapted to its action, or load it with gross and fatal vapors, and thus constitute it the instrument of mortality in another shape.-"Lo, these are parts of his ways."

He who attends to the structure of the human frame, may, from little knowledge of its parts which he is able to obtain, trace the progress of disease, and allay the fermentation and fever of the blood, by medicine, or by diminishing the quantity of the heated fluid; he

may assist the efforts of nature, and counteract in some measure, by the skilful application of science, the power of disease: but he cannot restore a single fibre destroyed, nor protract the life a moment beyond its appointed period; and, after all, he can know but the more obvious parts of this complicated machine, while its secret springs escape his most diligent researches. "Lo, these are parts of his ways, and how little a portion is heard of him?" As in the works of CREATION, SO is the Deity equally unsearchable,

II. IN THE MYSTERIES OF PROVIDENCE.

"He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it."

Most eminently in this respect "parts" only "of his ways" are submitted to our understanding; and he who objects to Revelation, because it involves in it mysteries which he cannot fathom, ought, to be consistent, on the same principles to deny the superintendence of Providence, to reject the religion of nature (so called) and to doubt his own existence, all of which include an equal and correspondent degree of obscurity and uncertainty. The history of the world presents scenery incessantly changing; and without being able to assign a reason for it, we see this nation, rising into distinction and that, falling into irretrievable desolation. One empire is swallowed up of another. The politics of this world present a discordant chaos, where all sorts of contrarieties are blended together; and it is the voice of God alone that can hush the uproar, and silence the strife; the hand of God alone that can harmonize these contending principles, and reconcile these violent oppositions; and the wisdom of God alone that can command a beautiful

world to emerge from this dark, disordered, formless abyss. Here, we see a man signalizing himself upon this great theatre, led by an invisible hand, surmounting opposition, and performing seeming impossibilities.

The strength of nations melts before him; and with resistless energy he overruns with his forces the mightiest kingdoms. He goes on to add dominion, to dominion, till he has subjugated the world; and this for no apparent reason! Such was Alexander; and modern history may be thought to present his counterpart! Again, we see a large empire dismembered-swallowed up in a night, or gradually mouldering by the revolt of this and the other province-all apparently the work of chance-all indisputably the operation of an infinite, and unsearchable Agent. So the extent of

Alexander's conquests, was equalled only by their rapidity; and with correspondent velocity, after his death his empire hastened to ruin: till Rome trod in his footsteps, and again held the world in chains. So Cyrus was conducted by an invisible hand to victory; and Babylon fell in a single night.

By the aid of Revelation we obtain a little light on this obscure subject. We are led behind the scene, and a "part" of the whole is developed. One or two of the wheels of the machine are submitted to our examination, that we may gather from our inspection of the construction of these, the harmony and consistency, the wisdom and stability, the power and immensity of the whole; and that we may be convinced that he who condescends now to explain one or two enigmas, can, and will hereafter, in his own time and way, explain all. We see why Alexander was permitted to conquer that the gospel of Jesus might be facilitated in its progress by the boundaries of empires being broken up, and a

free intercourse subsisting in all parts of the globe: and why Augustus decreed an enrolment that Joseph and Mary might be called from their obscurity, and the Messiah born, according to the decision of prophe. cy, at Bethlehem. The tide of human affairs, however agitated and impeded by counter-currents, swells in its progress, and amid all its windings sets irresistably towards the ocean of the divine purposes, in which it is ingulfed and lost.-"Lo, these are parts of his ways! but how little a portion is heard of him?"

If we withdraw our attention from the affairs of empires, and selecting a family, fix it upon an individual, the same perplexity appears upon the surface of his trials; and the same measure of illumination is cast upon the darkness of his path, when God condescends to unravel a portion of his own designs. We will appeal to the experience of that patriarch, whose singular providential trials have rendered him so often an object of selection to illustrate this assertion. Who, that saw the situation of Jacob, reduced to despair by the mysterious disappearance of his darling son, the detention of Simeon, and the demand for Benjamin to go into a strange country, a country in which his brother was imprisoned, would not have said, as he did, "All these things are against me?" We read these hallowed pages, and perceive that the loss of his first child was to preserve his own life, and that of all his family; and that the imprisonment of a second, and the demand for the third, were the means of the developement of the whole, and restored him to the arms of his long lamented Joseph!-"Lo, these are parts of his ways!" How small is the proportion of providențial mystery which is explained! How large that which is yet left involved in darkness, and perplexed in end