d, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combin'd;
Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That as they still succeed, they ravish still."

In the magnitude of the heavenly bodies, and the precision of their
movements, we behold the most glorious and convincing evidences of
the omnipotence of God's power, and the perfection of His wisdom and
skill. In the splendor of the starry dome of night--in the thousand
attractions of our earthly abode--the loveliness of its summer
landscapes--the beauty of its flowers, and the balmy fragrance they
distil upon the air--in the warmth of the precious sunlight, which
floods hill, valley, field, forest, and ocean--in the refreshing
influences of the evening dew, and "the early and latter rains"--in
the grateful breeze which bears life and health to our nostrils--in
the rich productions of the ever-bountiful soil--in these, in all
nature's wide departments, we read, with rejoicing eyes, the
witnesses of the impartial goodness and boundless beneficence of
the Father of spirits!

"My heart is awed within me, when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me--the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy Eternity."

Nature furnishes a thousand evidences of man's immortality--that
greatest of all truths asserted by revelation, and sustained by
religion. We see a corroboration of this momentous fact, in the
transformation of the loathsome caterpillar into the beautiful
butterfly, by the process of an actual death--in the dying and
reviving of the vegetable kingdom--in the luxuriant plant and golden
harvest, springing from the dead body of the seed--in the numerous
forms and processes in which life springs from death all around us.

"Oh, listen, man,
A voice within us speaks the startling word,
'Man, thou shalt never die!' Celestial voices
Hymn it round our souls; according harps,
By angel lingers touched when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sounds forth still
The song of our great immortality;
Thick-clustering orbs, and this our fair domain,
The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned seas,
Join in the solemn, universal song.
O, listen, ye, our spirits; drink it in
From all the air! 'Tis in the gentle moonl