the song of laws, laws, nature, nature, cannot be sung. To these facts we now advert.

There are mercies and arrangements indispensable to our comfort or our earthly existence, in the production of which the rules of attraction and of motion, of adhesion and affinity, in all their ten thousand bearings, had no concern. To these we now turn in

search of examples from the boundless mass.

Blessings and mercies not produced by any of the principles called the laws of nature.-Young reader, there is a part of South America where it does not rain. Shall that beautiful region be without what is necessary to man's life? No, it has been cared for. If you will take the map of South America, you may discover that her loftiest mountains do not, like the mountains of other lands, run in the middle, or near the middle of the continent. The Andes run along the edge, almost, of the land. You have heard of the trade winds. The Creator is kind to the sailor. He fans his cheek as he blasphemes his name. The sailor could not cross the tropical seas, if the winds were still, or uncertain. But travellers tell us, that these trade winds, so important to those who go down to the sea in ships, carry the clouds in such a direction, and with so much rapidity, that they are borne past a portion of South America. This kindness to a part of our race, or this conjoined with other causes, is the reason why the showers do not refresh the fields of another part. The Andes are much higher than our North American mountains, and there seems to be a good reason why we should rejoice at it. They arise above the common region of the clouds. It is said by those who have been there, that the winds bear the clouds against the side of this mountain, which

is too high for them to pass with facility. It is stated that the clouds are accumulated there, resulting in what might be termed an almost perpetual thunder-storm. It is said that the rivers are in a state of freshet, and are larger in proportion to their length, than our North American streams. (The map says this to the eye.) It is said that the sun beams on the slope of the Andes, (the south-eastern slope,) thirty or sixty miles broad, and many hundred miles in length, dripping with incessant rains, until evaporation fills the air with mist. It floats off toward the otherwise arid provinces, and abundant dews water the fields. These abundant dews sup. ply the place of rain. The green carpet is spread under the feet of the man who walks there. The fruit-bearing tree waves its beautiful branches over his head, but he never supposes for a moment, that a benevolent Con triver cared for his comfort. He thinks nature affords us food.

Before we make inferences, we will look at another portion of the earth where it does not rain. It does not rain in Egypt, and there is no mountain in the proper place to intercept the cloud, nor is there any current of passing clouds to be there condensed, even had the Andes lifted their heads along the shores of the Red Sea. No cause, or combination of causes is found powerful enough to water plentifully the fields of Egypt, yet it has been called the granary of the world.

This is owing to a number of circumstances, out of which we will notice only four or five. 1st.-Egypt is unlike every or any other kingdom of which we have read, in being not level merely, but flat enough to be overflowed. 2d.-A river runs through the middle, large enough to flood a wide range of the earth's surface.

3d.-The Mountains of the Moon invite the clouds, or a number of causes unite to produce the result. It rains there with sufficient profusion to swell a river high enough to cover a kingdom. The Nile heads in the Mountains of the Moon. 4th.-The distance from where the Nile receives the rain, to Egypt, is sufficiently protracted. It takes the flood several months to descend; so that the waters do not reach the fields where they are needed, too soon, or at an improper season of the year. 5. The rains fall at the proper season of the year, and in sufficient abundance.

Reader, when we tell the atheist of the kindness of our Father, in causing the grain to grow that we may be fed, he replies, that "nature supplies our wants," that, "it is the nature of the soil and the shower to prodúce vegetation." It is according to what he calls "the laws of nature.' Now, dear friend, you have mind enough, we have no doubt, to understand that if the atheist were to tell us of some law which produced the Andes, and reared them of a given height, we should desire to know why this law did not produce a similar mountain on the plains of Egypt? If any one could tell us how nature contrived to spread out the flat of Egypt, to receive the coming flood, we must wonder why nature did not level the hills of South America. Why did not inundation answer on the coast of Chili, and dew upon the sands of Egypt?

When facts like these are brought before us, and the world is covered with them, there remains no other possible alternative but to say "It happened, that it never rains in Egypt. It chanced that the country was flat, it being the only country that needed to be thus out. spread. The Andes ran in a fortunate direction, and

they happened to be higher than our mountains, or they would not intercept the teeming cloud. The contingent rains, far up the Nile, chanced to fall at the season which just answers. Luckily, these rains do not fall as often as in other sections, or two overflowings might happen in a year; the last drowning the crop, which the first had fostered," &c. &c. &c. You can begin to perceive what incredibilities the mind forsaken of divine influences can entertain. The earth is overspread with such things as we have been noticing. Then you may begin to suspect, that the train of enormous absurdities, which the atheist must believe, is endless.

We would not weary you with voluminous details, but we wish you to look fairly at the depravity of man. We must point you to similar illustrations and facts, such as we have endeavoured to improve.

There is a region where the inhabitants cannot say "It rains not on us," but they must say, "The timber grows not here." Greenland is without a forest. Do you ask how are their habitations warmed in winter? Sailors tell us that train oil is their fuel. But wood is wanting. Their houses must be covered; their spears and javelins must have handles. Without domestic or hunting utensils, boats, or fishing tackle, their homes cannot be tenanted; without wood these things cannot be made. Travellers tell us that a certain current of the ocean, or certain winds, or both united, bear along in a proper direction the once stately tree, and another and another with abundant constancy, and lodge the needed forest between the islands. There it remains until needed by those whom the Lord forgets not. The soil does not nourish the needed oak for their convenience, but the billow obeys his voice and bears it to them.

Reader, if you had no resource for fuel, but train oil, you could not get that, for the whale is ordered to swim nearest to those who most need his flesh. No trees are thus borne along the shores of France, or Spain, or England, or perhaps any other nation. They are not needed, but in the frozen climes. Where these trees are torn from, or how they are swept away, we are not commonly told, and it matters not, so that the Greenlander fails not to receive his mercies. If other shores were naked, and forests waved not there, they would not be supplied as is this land of snow, for ocean's current is not freighted thus with trees, or it does not bear in the right direction, or the islands do not stand so as to form a store-house for the timber. Reader, whilst looking at these facts, as they are scattered all over the earth, it is evident enough that our Parent designed it all in kindness. To believe otherwise requires an appetite for untruth, that no man need covet.

Whilst stating that these mind-exhibiting contrivances were scattered all over the earth, we scarcely crossed the threshold of reality. The train of thought-evincing facts, stretches from world to world, and extends from star to star.

Reader, we will show that those who receive and love nonsense as extensive as the world we inhabit, do not stop at that achievement. Their credulity is capacious enough to swallow absurdities as broad as creation.

The truth-hater overcomes his difficulties, although they are as wide as the universe, and as numerous as the objects of which creation is composed. The scientific reader must allow us to depart at will from the language of astronomy, when speaking of distant worlds, so as to be understood by the little boy or the unread investigator.