ure to admire God in the works of his creation.
For this gentleman was of opinion, that a walk or a ride was as
proper a time as any to think about good things: for which reason,
on such occasions he seldom thought so much about his money or his
trade, or public news, as at other times, that he might with more
ease and satisfaction enjoy the pious thoughts which the wonderful
works of the great Maker of heaven and earth are intended to raise
in the mind.

As this serene contemplation of the visible heavens insensibly
lifted up his mind from the works of God in nature to the same God
as he is seen in revelation, it occurred to him that this very
connexion was clearly intimated by the royal prophet in the
nineteenth Psalm--that most beautiful description of the greatness
and power of God exhibited in the former part, plainly seeming
intended to introduce, illustrate, and unfold the operations of the
word and Spirit of God on the heart in the latter. And he began to
run a parallel in his own mind between the effects of that highly
poetical and glowing picture of the material sun in searching and
warming the earth, in the first six verses, and the spiritual
operation attributed to the "law of God," which fills up the
remaining part of the Psalm. And he persuaded himself that the
divine Spirit which dictated this fine hymn, had left it as a kind
of general intimation to what use we were to convert our admiration
of created things; namely, that we might be led by a sight of them
to raise our views from the kingdom of nature to that of grace, and
that the contemplation of God in his works might draw us to
contemplate him in his word.

In the midst of these reflections, Mr. Johnson's attention was all
of a sudden called off by the barking of a shepherd's dog, and
looking up, he spied one of those little huts which are here and
there to be seen on those great downs; and near it was the shepherd
himself busily employed with his dog in collecting together his vast
flock of sheep. As he drew nearer, he perceived him to be a clean,
well-looking, poor man, near fifty years of age. His coat, though at
first it had probably been of one dark color, had been in a long
course of years so often patched with different sorts of cloth, that
it was now become hard to say which had been the original color. But
this, while it gave a plain proof of the shepherd's poverty, equally
proved the exceeding neatness, industry, and good management of