bsolutely that
beauty is an object in nature, and assign even the colors of flowers
and insects to utility alone, and this of a very low order, this
doctrine is so repulsive to our higher sentiments that there is
little danger of its general acceptance; while the slightest
consideration shows that the utilities referred to could have been
secured without any of this consummate beauty associated with them,
and our perception of and delight in which mark in a way beyond the
ability of skepticism to cavil at our own spiritual kinship with the
Author of all this profusion of beauty. Yet man is represented as the
chief created being for whom this earth has been prepared and
designed. He obtains dominion over it. A chosen spot is prepared for
him, in which not only his wants but his tastes are consulted; and,
being made in the image of his Maker, his aesthetic sentiments
correspond with the beauties of the Maker's work, and he finds there
also food for his reason and imagination. This view of the subject, as
well as others already referred to, is finely represented in the
address of the Almighty to Job.[26]

The Bible also very often refers to the special adaptations of natural
objects and laws to each other, and to the promotion of the happiness
of sentient creatures lower than man. The 104th Psalm is replete with
notices of such adaptations, and so is the address to Job; and indeed
this view seems hardly ever absent from the minds of the Hebrew
writers, but has its highest applications in the lilies of the field,
that toil not neither do they spin, and the sparrows that are sold for
a farthing, yet the heavenly Father has clothed the one with
surpassing beauty, and provides food for the other, nor allows it to
fail without his knowledge. I may, by way of farther illustration,
merely name a few of the adaptations referred to in Job xxxviii. and
the following chapters. The winds and the clouds are so arranged as to
afford the required supplies of moisture to the wilderness where no
man is, to "cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth." For
similar objects the tempest is ordered, and the clouds arranged "by
wisdom." The adaptations of the wild ass, the wild goat, the ostrich,
the migratory birds, the horse, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, to
their several habitats, modes of life, and uses in nature, are most
vividly sketched and applied as illustrations of the consummate wisdom
of the Creator, which descends to the m