their formation by the passage of waters*. He also describes corresponding and equally decisive phenomena on Mount Jurat.

Is it too much to have said, that no mode of instrumental agency within the circle of our experience and the cognizance of our judgment could have produced the existing form of the surface of the earth, except the action of retiring water?

Thus, while the exterior strata of the earth, by recording in characters unquestionable and indelible the fact of a primeval and penal deluge, attest from age to age the holiness and the justice of God: the form and aspect of its surface are with equal clearness testifying from generation to generation His inherent and not less glorious Attribute of Mercy. For they prove that the very deluge, in its irruption employed as the instrument in his dispensation of vengeance to destroy a guilty world, was in its recess so regu. lated by Him as to the varying rapidity of its subsidence, so directed by Him throughout all

* Voyage dans les Alpes, tom. i. p. 222, 223. Tom. ii. p. 33, 34.

its consecutive operations, as to prepare the desolated globe for the reception of a restored succession of inhabitants; and so to arrange the surface as to adapt it in every climate for the sustenance of the animals, for the production of the trees and plants, and for the growth and commodious cultivation of the grain and the fruits, of which man, in that particular region, would chiefly stand in need.

During the retirement of the waters, when a barrier of a rocky stratum, sufficiently strong for resistance, crossed the line of descent, a lake would be in consequence formed. These me. morials of the dominion of that element which had recently been so destructive, remain also as memorials of the mercy of the Restorer of Nature; and by their own living splendors, and by the beauty and the grandeur of their boundaries, are the most exquisite ornaments of the scenes in which we dwell.

Would you receive and cherish a strong impression of the extent of the mercy displayed in the renewal of the face of the earth? Would you endeavour to render justice to the subject? Contemplate the number of the diversified effects

H

on the surface of the globe, which have been wrought, arranged, and harmonised, by the divine benignity, through the agency of the retiring deluge: and combine in your survey of them the two connected characteristics, utility and beauty, utility to meet the necessities and multiply the comforts of man, beauty graciously superadded to cheer his eye and delight his heart, with which the general aspect of nature is impressed. Observe the mountains, of every form and of every elevation. See them now rising in bold acclivities; now accumulated in a succession of gracefully sweeping ascents; now towering in rugged precipices; now rearing above the clouds their spiry pinnacles glittering with perpetual snow. View their sides now darkened with unbounded forests; now spreading to the sun their ample slopes covered with herbage, the summer resorts of the flocks and the herds of subjacent regions; now scooped into sheltered concavities; now enclosing within their ranges glens green as the emerald, and watered by streams pellucid and sparkling as crystal. Pursue these glens as they unite and enlarge themselves; mark their rivulets uniting

and enlarging themselves also: until the glen becomes a valley, and the valley expands into a rich vale or a spacious plain, each varied and bounded by hills and knolls and gentle uplands, in some parts chiefly adapted for pasturage, in others for the plough; each intersected and refreshed by rivers flowing onward from country to country, and with streams continually augmented by collateral accessions, until they are finally lost in the ocean. There new modes of beauty await the beholder; winding shores, bold capes, rugged promontories, deeply indented bays, harbours penetrating far inland and protected from every blast. But in these vast and magnificent features of nature, the gracious Author of all things has not exhausted the attractions with which He purposed to decorate inanimate objects. He pours forth beauties in detail, and with unsparing prodigality of munificence, and for whatever other reasons, for human gratification also, on the several portions, however inconsiderable, of which the larger component parts of the splendid whole consist: on the rock, on the fractured stone, on the thicket, on the single tree, on the bush, on the

mossy bank, on the plant, on the flower, on the leaf. Of all these works of his wondrous hand He is continually varying and enhancing the attractions by the diversified modes and accessions of beauty with which He invests them, by the alterations of seasons, by the countless and rapid changes of light and shade, by the characteristic effects of the rising, the meridian, the setting sun, by the subdued glow of twilight, by the soft radiance of the moon; and by the hues, the actions, and the music of the animal tribes with which they are peopled. While Natural Theology perceives the Creator thus lavishing sources of pure and innocent pleasure on the abode of a race of transgressors; well may she listen with admiring yet undoubting faith to the voice of Revelation, which tells her that the eternal delights ordained for the redeemed of the Lord in those new heavens and that new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, ordained for them by Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, shall be such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.