not make the tire. The blacksmith who makes the tire does not smelt the ore; and the forgeman who smelts the ore does not build his own furnace, (and there we get back to the point whence we started,) nor dig his own mine. The man who digs the mine does not make the pickaxe with which he digs it, nor the pump with which he keeps out the water. The man who makes the pump did not discover the principle of atmospheric pressure, which led to pump-making: that was done by a mathematician at Florence, experimenting in his chamber on a glass tube. And here we come back again to our glass, and to an instance of the close connexion of scientific research with practical art. It is plain that this enumeration might be pursued till every art and every science were shown to run into every other. No one can

doubt this who will go over the subject in his own mind, beginning with any one of the processes of mining and working metals, of ship-building, and navigation, and the other branches of art and industry pursued in civilised communities.

If, then, on the one hand, the astronomer depends for his telescope on the ultimate product of so many arts; in return, his observations are the basis of an astronomical system, and of calculations of the movements of the heavenly bodies, which furnish the mariner with his best guide across the ocean. The prudent shipmaster would no more think of sailing for India without his Bowditch's "Practical Navigator" than he would without his compass; and this navigator contains tables drawn from the highest walks of astronomical science. Every first mate of a vessel, who works a lunar observation to ascertain the ship's longitude, employs tables in which the most wonderful discoveries and calculations of La Place, and Newton, and Bowditch are interwoven

I mention this as but one of the cases in which astronomical science promotes the service and convenience of common life; and, perhaps, when we consider the degree to which the modern extension of navigation connects itself with industry in all its branches, this may be thought sufficient. I will only add, that the cheap convenience of an almanac, which enters into the

comforts of every fireside in the country, could not be enjoyed, but for the labours and studies of the profoundest philosophers. Not that great learning or talent is now required to execute the astronomical calculations of an almanac, although no inconsiderable share of each is needed for this purpose; but because even to perform these calculations requires the aid of tables which have been gradually formed on the basis of the profoundest investigations of the long line of philosophers, who have devoted themselves to this branch of science. For, as we observed on the mechanical side of the illustration, it was not one trade alone which was required to furnish the philosopher with his instrument, but a great variety; so, on the other hand, it is not the philosopher in one department who creates a science out of nothing. The observing astronomer furnishes materials to the calculating astronomer, and the calculator derives methods from the pure mathematician, and a long succession of each for ages must unite their labours in a great result. Without the geometry of the Greeks, and the algebra of the Arabs, the infinitesimal analyses of Newton and Leibnitz would never have been invented.

Examples and illustrations equally instructive might be found in every other branch of industry. The man who will go into a cotton-mill, and contemplate it from the great water-wheel that gives the first movement, (and still more from the steam-engine, should that be the moving power,) who will observe the parts of the machinery, and the various processes of the fabric, till he reaches the hydraulic press with which it is made into a bale, and the canal or railroad by which it is sent to market, may find every branch of trade, and every department of science, literally crossed, intertwined, interwoven, with every other, like the woof and the warp of the article manufactured. Not a little of the spinning machinery is constructed on principles drawn from the demonstrations of transcendental mathematics; and the processes of bleaching and dyeing now practised are the results of the most profound researches of modern chemistry. And, if this does not satisfy the inquirer, let him trace the cotton to the plantation where it grew, in Georgia or Alabama; the indigo to Bengal;

the oil to the olive-gardens of Italy, or the fishing-grounds of the Pacific Ocean; let him consider the cotton-gin, the cardingmachine, the power-loom, and the spinning apparatus, and all the arts, trades, and sciences directly or indirectly connected with these, and I believe he will soon agree that one might start from a yard of coarse printed cotton, which costs ten cents, and prove out of it, as out of a text, that every art and science under heaven had been concerned in its fabric.

MAN having destroyed that which God delighted in, that is, the beauty of his soul, fell into an evil portion, and being seized on by the divine justice, grew miserable, and condemned to an incurable sorrow. Poor Adam, being banished and undone, went and lived a sad life in the mountains of India and turned his face and his prayers towards Paradise; thither he sent his sighs, to that place he directed his devotions, there was his heart now, where his felicity sometimes had been: but he knew not how to return thither, for God was his enemy, and by many of his attributes, opposed himself against him. God's power was armed against him; and poor man, whom a fly or a fish could kill, was assaulted and beaten with a sword of fire in the hand of a cherubim. God's eye watched him, His omniscience was man's accuser, His severity was his judge, His justice the executioner. It was a mighty calamity that man was to undergo, when He that made him armed Himself against His creature, which would have died or turned to nothing, if He had but withdrawn the miracles and the almightiness of His power; if God had taken His arm from under him, man had perished. But it was, therefore, a greater evil when God laid His arm on him, and against him, and seemed to support him that He might be longer killing him. In the midst of these sadnesses God remembered His own creature, and pitied it; and, by His mercy, rescued him from the hands of His power, and the sword of His justice, and the

guilt of his punishment, and the disorder of his sin; and placed him in that order of good things where he ought to have stood It was mercy that preserved the noblest of God's creatures here below; he who stood condemned and undone under all the other attributes of God was saved and rescued by His mercy; that it may be evident that God's mercy is above all His works, and above all ours, greater than the creation, and greater than our sins. As is His majesty, so is His mercy—that is, without measures and without rules, sitting in heaven and filling all the world, calling for a duty that He may give a blessing, making man that He may save him, punishing him that He may preserve him. And God's justice bowed down to His mercy, and all His power passed into mercy, and His omniscience converted into care and watchfulness, into providence and observation for man's avail; and Heaven gave its influence for man, and rained showers for our food and drink; and the attributes and acts of God sat at the foot of mercy, and all that mercy descended upon the head of man. For so the light of the world in the turning of the creation was spread abroad like a curtain, and dwelt nowhere, but filled the expansum with a dissemination great as the unfoldings of the air's looser garment, or the wilder fringes of the fire, without knots, or order, or combination; but God gathered the beams in His hand, and united them into a globe of fire, and all the light of the world became the body of the sun; and he lent some to his weaker sister that walks in the night, and guides a traveller, and teaches him to distinguish a house from a river, or a rock from a plain field. So is the mercy of God a vast expansum and a huge ocean; from eternal ages it dwelt round about the throne of God, and it filled all that infinite distance and space, that hath no measures but the will of God; until God, desiring to communicate that excellency and make it relative, created angels, that He might have persons capable of huge gifts and man, who He knew would need forgivenness. For so the angels, our elder brothers, dwelt for ever in the house of their Father, and never brake His commandments; but we, the younger, like prodigals, forsook our Father's house, and went

into a strange country, and followed stranger courses, and spent the portion of our nature, and forfeited all our title to the family, and came to need another portion. For ever since the fall of Adam, who, like an unfortunate man, spent all that a wretched man could need, or a happy man could have, our life is repentance, and forgiveness is all our portion; and though angels were objects of God's bounty, yet man only is, in proper speaking, the object of His mercy; and the mercy which dwelt in an infinite circle became confined to a little ring, and dwelt here below; and here shall dwell below, till it hath carried all God's portion up to heaven, where it shall reign and glory upon our crowned heads for ever and ever!

But for him that considers God's mercies, and dwells a while in that depth, it is hard not to talk widely, and without art and order of discoursings. St Peter talked he knew not what, when he entered into a cloud with Jesus on Mount Tabor, though it passed over him like the little curtains that ride upon the north wind, and pass between the sun and us. And when we converse with a light greater than the sun, and taste a sweetness more delicious than the dew of heaven, and in our thoughts entertain the ravishments and harmony of that atonement, which reconciles God to man, and man to felicity, it will be more easily pardoned, if we should be like persons that admire much, and say but little: and indeed we can but confess the glories of the Lord by dazzled eyes, and a stammering tongue, and a heart overcharged with the miracles of this infinity. For so those little drops that run over, though they be not much in themselves, yet they tell that the vessel was full, and could express the greatness of the shower no otherwise but by spilling, and in artificial expressions and runnings over. But because I have undertaken to tell the drops of the ocean, and to span the measures of eternity, I must do it by the great lines of revelation and experience, and tell concerning God's mercy as we do concerning God himself, that He is that great fountain of which we all drink, and the great rock of which we all eat, and on which we all dwell, and under whose shadow we all are refreshed. God's mercy is all this, and