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If, therefore, such care was had for only one flower of the field, how much more in the whole system of terrestrial adaptations, between the air and its gases, the land and water, the animal and the vegetable, must care have been taken for the well-being and preservation of all things; and above all for man, for whose use all things were made.
Arrived at this point, our favorite studies lead directly from nature up to nature's God; and the youth, with his mind thus directed, finds only a greater force in the emphasis of the prophet, " Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand; and meted out heaven with the span; and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure; and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?"
Disquisition is stale; commentary is tame; all the works of nature abound with lofty doctrines, wholesome in their effects, useful in their results. They chasten the mind and ennoble the disposition. He who reads by such lights and doubts, is no philosopher, but the drivelling companion of the undevout astronomer. When I see a youth enter college, having in him the true spirit of mathematical investigation and philosophical research, I mark him for a useful man, and a noble example in his generation. "God works by geometry." Impressed with the sublime precept of his favorite study, his course from the beginning is like the first flight of the lark in the morning, "upward and onward, with a hymn in his heart."
There are minds whose exuberant fancy leads them off from the paths of science into the regions of fable and romance; there they build their airy castles, and lighting them up with the brilliancy of their imaginations, they revel on with fairy queens or goblins bold. There is a reality in store
