We have seen, as it were, the architecture and frame of the universe; the just proportion of all its parts; and the bare cast of the eye has sufficed us to find and discover even in an ant, more than in the sun, a wisdom and power that delights to exert itself in polishing and adorning its vilest works.

This is obvious, without any speculative discussion, to the most ignorant of men; but what a world of other wonders should we discover should we penetrate into the secrets of physics, and dissect the inward parts of animals, which are framed according to the most perfect mechanics.

Let a man study the world as much as he pleases; let him descend into the minutest details; dissect the vilest of animals; narrowly consider the least grain of corn sown in the ground, and the manner in which it germinates and multiplies; attentively observe with what precautions a rose-bud blows and opens in the sun, and closes again at night; and he will find in all these more design, conduct, and industry than in all the works of art.  Nay, what is called the art of men is but a faint imitation of the great art called the laws of nature, which the impious did not blush to call blind chance.  Is it, therefore, a wonder that poets animated the whole universe, bestowed wings upon the winds, and arrows on the sun, and described great rivers impetuously running to precipitate themselves into the sea and trees shooting up to heaven to repel the rays of the sun by their thick shades?  These images and figures have also been received in the language of the vulgar, so natural it is for men to be sensible of the wonderful art that fills all nature.

Poetry did only ascribe to inanimate creatures the art and design of the Creator, who does everything in them.  From the figurative language of the poets those notions passed into the theology of the heathens, whose divines were the poets.  They supposed an art, a power, or a wisdom, which they called numen [divinity], in creatures the most destitute of understanding.  With them great rivers were gods, and spring naiads.  Woods and mountains had their particular deities; flowers had their Flora; and fruits, Pomona.  After all, the more a man contemplates nature, the more he discovers in it an inexhaustible stock of wisdom, which is, as it were, the soul of the universe.

What must we infer from thence?  The consequence flows of itself.  “If so much wisdom and penetration,” says Minutius Felix, “are required to observe the wonderful order and design of the structure of the world, how much more were necessary to form it!”

If men so much admire philosophers because they discover a small part of the wisdom that made all things, they must be stark blind not to admire that wisdom itself.

IV.—­A PRAYER TO GOD

O my God, if so many men do not discover Thee in this great spectacle Thou givest them of all nature, it is not because Thou art far from any of us.  Every one of us feels Thee, as it were, with his hand; but the senses, and the passions they raise, take up all the attention of our minds.  Thus, O Lord, Thy light shines in darkness; but darkness is so thick and gloomy that it does not admit the beams of Thy light.