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It will not, I feel assured, have escaped the reflective amongst this audience, that of such pursuits as those on which we are about to engage ourselves the chief end should be, not merely to extend our acquaintance with matters or things, their qualities or accidents; or to waste time, however sedulously employed, if our efforts merely entitle us to the barren praise of skilful compilers of dry and isolated facts, or unwearied classifiers of characteristic peculiarities or attributes, ingenious nomenclators, or editors who look on the volume of nature as a dictionary; but that our faith is to learn their relative value in subordination to the comprehensive scheme of Creation; and by exalting the understanding waft it above the cheerless sophistry which chains the soul to an empty materialism, and warm the affections towards the Great Author of being. When we acknowledge that to be the needle which guides our speculations we will be perpetually reminded of that infinite wisdom which governs and regulates the orb in which we dwell—but one amidst the countless myriads of worlds which divine intelligence holds within their spheres—and looking "from nature up to nature's God," muse with admiration and humility upon the system to which we owe so many blessings, and the succession of those indissoluble links which connect us with immortality.
We may then, in sincere approbation of the sentiments attributed to our first parents in the simplicity of their uncorrupted state, join in their enthusiastic exclamation:—
"These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good,
Almighty! thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair: thyself how wondrous then,
Unspeakable! who sit'st above these heav'ns,
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works: yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought and power divine."
Lucas Brothers, Printers, 72, Collins Street. East, Melbourne.
