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In like manner, the memorable word tory, and the proverbs of nations, consis of a natural fact, selected as a picture c of a moral truth. Thus; A rolling ston no moss; A bird in the hand is worth t bush; A cripple in the right way, wi racer in the wrong; Make hay while shines; 'T is hard to carry a full cu Vinegar is the son of wine; The la broke the camel's back; Long-lived trroots first; and the like. In their sense these are trivial facts, but we rep for the value of their analogical impor is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, and allegories.

This relation between the mind and not fancied by some poet, but stands in of God, and so is free to be known by It appears to men, or it does not appear. in fortunate hours we ponder this min

wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not lind and deaf;

"Can these things be,

And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder?"

or the universe becomes transparent, and the ight of higher laws than its own, shines through t. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of he Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the oad-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her ridle. There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preëxist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preeding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact s the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of he invisible world. "Material objects," said a French philosopher, "are necessarily kinds of coria of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to

must have a spiritual and moral side." This doctrine is abstruse, and th images of "garment," "scoriæ," "mi may stimulate the fancy, we must sur aid of subtler and more vital expositors it plain. "Every scripture is to be in by the same spirit which gave it forth,' fundamental law of criticism. A life in with nature, the love of truth and of v purge the eyes to understand her degrees we may come to know the sense of the permanent objects of natur the world shall be to us an open book, a form significant of its hidden life and fi

A new interest surprises us, whilst, view now suggested, we contemplate t extent and multitude of objects; sinc object rightly seen, unlocks a new facu soul." That which was unconscious comes, when interpreted and defined in a part of the domain of knowledge, weapon in the magazine of power.

CHAPTER V.

DISCIPLINE.

In view of the significance of nature, we rrive at once at a new fact, that nature is a iscipline. This use of the world includes the receding uses, as parts of itself.

Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, loconotion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give s sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning unlimited. They educate both the Underanding and the Reason. Every property of hatter is a school for the understanding, its olidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its gure, its divisibility. The understanding adds, ivides, combines, measures, and finds nutriment nd room for its activity in this worthy scene. Teantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into s own world of thought, by perceiving the nalogy that marries Matter and Mind.

1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible bjects is a constant exercise in the necessary essons of difference, of likeness, of order, of

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of assent from particular to general; o. nation to one end of manifold forces. tioned to the importance of the orga formed, is the extreme care with which tion is provided, a care pretermitte single case. What tedious training, c

day, year after year, never ending, to common sense; what continual reprodu annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; joicing over us of little men; what disp prices, what reckonings of interest,- ar form the Hand of the mind; - to ins that "good thoughts are no better th dreams, unless they be executed!"

The same good office is performed perty and its filial systems of debt and Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the the orphan, and the sons of genius f hate; - debt, which consumes so mu which so cripples and disheartens a gre with cares that seem so base, is a p whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is most by those who suffer from it most. over, property, which has been well com snow," if it fall level to-day, it will b into drifts to-morrow," is the surface a internal machinery, like the index on the