Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/252

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feeling of grateful acknowledgment to Him whose Love prompted, and whose Wisdom finished, Creation's beauteous work. Who? when he contemplates his own being endowed with mental and bodily powers, so as to be able to discern the qualities and properties of all objects in the three kingdoms of nature, and to give them names expressive of such qualities—to be able to trace all effects up to their causes, and again from causes down to effects—to behold the starry heavens—to measure the distances of planets and the periods of their revolutions—who? when he reflects on these things, can refrain from exclaiming in the language of David, "Great and marvellous are thy works. Lord God Almighty!"

Man, being a living form of Jehovah's Love and Wisdom, is endowed with powers, faculties, and senses, which, when duly exercised, give to life a charm, and present even this world as a paradise of joys.

But what would be the value of creation's beauteous scenes to man, had he not been endowed with these five senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch? It is by these that he holds commerce with the outward world—by these he sees the form and colour of objects; recognizes harmonious and discordant sounds; perceives odours both pleasant and nauseous; enjoys the delicious properties of food; and knows by the touch the qualities of all bodies; so that by the whole he is enabled to avoid the evil and cling to the good. Without the senses, all would be dark and dreary: music and the sweet harmony of sound would be as the stillness of death; flowers would send out odours in vain; the nauseous and the sweet would be the same; there would be neither taste nor speech; and