universal discord, and out of death and destruction bringing forth life and health, and universal joy! He who, as Hermas, an ancient writer, speaks, 'contains all things,' can alone thus act upon all things, and direct them, in all their ways, to acknowledge him, by the accomplishment of each wise and beneficent purpose of his will. Philo Judæus, in his book upon agriculture, speaking of those words of the Psalmist, The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing, has the following sublime idea illustrative of this subject" God, like a shepherd and King, leads, according to right and law, the earth, and the water, and the air, and the fire, and whatever plants or animals are therein; things mortal and things divine; the physical structure also of the heavens, and of the sun and moon; the revolutions and harmonious choirs of the other stars, placing over them his right word, the first-born Son, who has inherited the care of this holy flock as the Viceroy of our mighty King.'" Meditation. Can you, Christian reader, contemplate these things, can you stand still and consider the wondrous works of God (Job xxxvii. 14.) without joining in the expressions of David? When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the Son of Man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Psalm viii. 3-5. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches, so is the great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts! O may I learn to fear, and love, and trust in, and serve thee, my Creator and my God, now and evermore! 2. THE VASTNESS OF THE VISIBLE CREATION. Man, confined to a cottage in a little village, is ready to think his own hamlet, or his neighbouring market towns, comprehend the chief part of the world. Men who have never been out of their own country, and have read little of others, have but a feeble idea of the vastness of the habitable globe, with its thickly inhabited cities, its trackless regions, its almost boundless ocean, and its eight hundred millions of inhabitants. Men, before the discovery of astronomy, had little idea of the worlds upon worlds in the midst of which our earth moves, and of which it forms a part. The Bible leads us however to other worlds and other inhabitants of those worlds, and shews the interest which they take both in our creation and in the wonders of redemption, which things the angels desire to look into. But lift up your eyes and survey the vast hemisphere above. See by day the sun in its splendour and glory. It is calculated to be nearly one hundred millions of miles distant from us, and nearly nine hundred thousand miles in diameter, being above one million times as large as our earth. Besides our earth, ten planets, some appearing like splendid stars, and several of them vastly larger than the earth, revolve around the sun. One of the more distant of those planets, Saturn, five hundred times larger than our earth, is calculated to be above nine hundred millions of miles distant from the sun.1 O how vast the Maker of all, who bid them to be and to move in their varied orbits! But take a larger survey, go beyond the sphere of our sun and the planets, revolving around it; look up on a clear night, to the immense concave above your heads. See its glittering glories. And then consider the light which God has given respecting them by modern discoveries made through the telescope. It has been calculated that light comes to the earth from the sun in eight minutes, but so distant is one of the nearest of the fixed stars that light takes a year and a half to pass from that star to the earth. The distance of the stars from us is such that, in the best observations made with the most powerful telescopes, they still retain the appearance which they have to the naked eye, of mere points of light. Their size must be immense. Their number is incal JUPITER 81,155 254,908 424,000,000 2,662,280,000 9 56 4332 2 20 362 10.759 6 36 326 Uncert. The admeasurement is by English miles: there are considerable variations in the different admeasurements. The other planets are Pallas, Juno, Ceres, Vesta. culable. The milky way, examined by powerful telescopes, resolves itself into an incredible number of small stars. O how great, how glorious the Creator and Upholder of these innumerable worlds! Nor is his greatness and glory diminished, but magnified, by the same traces of wisdom, power and love, discovered to us by the microscope in the smallest and meanest of insects. The earth is not a flat piece of ground, but a globe, like an orange, about twenty-four thousand miles round. The sun does not go round the earth, as it appears to do, and as, in common language, all speak of it as doing; but the earth goes round the sun, in three hundred and sixty-five days, and turns round its own axis in twenty-four hours, causing thus the varied seasons of the year, and the interchange of night and day. How wonderful is the power of God, thus suspending these mighty globes in the air, and revolving each in the immensity of space, and keeping each in its orbit, without ever deviating from their appointed course! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded, and they were created. He hath also established them for ever and ever. If a cannon-ball were to proceed from the earth as quickly as it goes from the mouth of a cannon, and to continue going with the same rapidity till it reached the nearest of the fixed stars, it has been calculated that it would take above 600 years to reach that star. How wonderful also are the COMETS. The word Comet, taken from a Greek word, is so called from the appearance of the comet in the skies, generally with a long hairy brush, or tail of light, connected with it. A comet is a heavenly body, in the plane tary region, appearing suddenly, and then disappearing. Some return in a short period, others require a longer period; Halley's comet returns in about 76 years. Some of them pass so quickly through the air as to move many millions of miles in a day. But little, however, is yet known respecting them. This is calculated to teach us, respecting creation as well as redemption, that humbling but profitable lesson: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Meditation. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who hast set thy glory above the heavens! And yet thou condescendedst to be my God and my portion for ever. And all thy wisdom, greatness, power, and love are in Jesus, my security for everlasting blessedness. Who is so great a God as our God? 3. THE CREATION OF MAN. We must now more distinctly consider the creation of man, as God dwells more particularly upon it, and it more immediately concerns us. This is the account given of our creation :-God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them, The ever-glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy |