tect to do it for her. He comes--the great Greek architect, with
measure and rule. Will he not also make the weight for the winds? and
weigh out the waters by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a
way for the lightning of the thunder? He sets himself orderly to his
work, and behold! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing into
which the great Greek architect improves the sea--

[Illustration]

[Greek: Thalatta, thalatta]: Was it this, then, that they wept to see
from the sacred mountain--those wearied ones?

Sec. IV. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and were not also
the leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort, as far as may be
without mark of sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it be
pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our
foreheads, that we might be known one from the other?

Sec. V. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art? Have we only to
copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We
have work to do upon it; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so
feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve,
but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable,
in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long
contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then
set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating
it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one does not
improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower
visible; and then the human being has to make its power upon his own
heart visible also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has
raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And
sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange
lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown: ways specially
directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which he had to choose
instruments out of the wide armory of God. All this he may do: and in
this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written,
as well as the created word, "rightly _dividing_ the word of truth." Out
of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather and set forth
things new and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are
before him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such
illustration and enforcement as may be in his