but in these cases they may take the simple assertion of authors, because they are items concerning which Christians and unbelievers do not disagree. We cannot call attention to one fact in a million, but advert to a few, which will bring us once more to the inevitable conclusion.

1. The moon moves around us, flying from west to east; had it happened to move from north to south, we should have been two weeks without beholding her silver visage.

2. Had it chanced that the course of the moon's orbit had been from north to south, she would not shine on those living near the poles for fourteen days alternately.

3. If the moon had been placed at a greater distance from us, she would have appeared smaller, and her light would have shone more faintly.

4. If the moon were much nearer us than she now is, her light, in many of her phases, would shine more dimly, because, as it regards the sun's rays, the angle of reflection must thus be rendered more obtuse.

5. If the moon were much larger than it is, it would pull the earth from her proper orbit, unless an alteration in the earth's size and motion (reaching on to, and requiring an alteration in every thing else) were accomplished.

6. The number of particulars in which we are be nefited by the ebbing and flowing of the tides, we shall not endeavour to enumerate. One advantage we must state. Water is kept pure by motion. The quiet pond stagnates and interrupts the health of those who live near it. The river putrefies not, for its current agi.

tates and its constant rolling clarifies its billows. The lake is not only shaken by vehement winds, but its waters are unceasingly changed for a new supply. Evaporation diminishes, and tributary rivers supply the waste. The lakes are thus becoming new lakes without interruption or delay. The ocean is too deep to be thus changed; and although the storms which help to preserve the lake by agitation, do also shake the ocean, this alone does not seem to be entirely sufficient. The ocean, however, is salt and never entirely still. These two together secure its purity. But where the river meets the ocean, and the ocean meets the river, they mutually still each other. The extended promontory or the crooked shore often shelters the river's mouth from the wind, so that the water there is not only devoid of agitation from the river's current, which is impeded by the ocean's waters, but it is almost devoid of salt, just where the gale is kept off by the hills from shaking its quiet surface. Then shall the sluggish waters putrify, diseases in proportion spread, and render the shores of our ocean scarcely habitable? No; the tides dash the waters up the river till they meet its current, and roll them back again often enough to prevent the threatened stagnation.

The moon's attraction calls up our tides; let us then rejoice because we chance to have a moon.

8. If the moon were nearer to us, it would increase the tide so as to overflow much of our beautiful and fertile shore.

9. If the moon were larger, this same serious evil must result. It would be a sad inconvenience indeed, were the waters elevated each day only a few feet higher.

10. If the moon were smaller, or if it were more distant, the tides would be so diminished as to answer

little purpose.

11. If the axis of our earth had happened to be uninclined, only that portion of our globe could have been inhabited called the torrid zone, and there no change of season would have occurred.

12. If our earth's diurnal motion had been more rapid, shortening our night and day, much of our middle earth, (the equatorial regions,) would have been drowned continually by the elevated ocean.

13. If this rotary motion were more slow, the same deluge would ruin much of the region which we inhabit and that which is north of us.

Conclusion.-Dear friend, is it necessary that we should continue to enumerate such facts? We know not where they would end. The catalogue has no termination on which the eye of man has ever rested. Volumes have been filled concerning similar arrangements visible on our earth, such as if altered in any way, devastation and ruin must ensue. After these volumes were filled, it was seen that the threshold was not passed. Only the introduction ever could be penned. After reminding you, that those who contend that all these things have always been as they now are, must believe that it is exceedingly fortunate that they were right, and happily convenient, from all eternity, we shall ask the reader a few important questions.

Question 1. What do you think of the condition of the soul which, rather than receive the truth revealed to us concerning a kind Father, a wise and glorious Creator, will believe in a volume of happy accidents

and fortunate occurrences, no matter whether they took place yesterday or always existed?

Q. 2. If this volume is gathered from the surface of our earth, how much must it be increased if written concerning every one of the thirty worlds, save one, which move around our sun?

Q. 3. What do you think of the condition of the soul which, rather than worship a kind Father and wise Creator, will devour thirty large volumes of nonsense, or believe in thirty endless catalogues of happy contingencies, without which, the world where they are seen, could not exist?

our sun.

Q. 4. Take the telescope and look at the stars: you will find they are all suns! We have reason to be assured that many of them are many times larger than But if we were to conjecture concerning the number of worlds (guessing from analogy) cherished by each sun, it would not be an unfair supposition to say "I will allow that each sun I see was not made in vain or, that it is not less useful than our own; therefore thirty worlds at least may float around each sun.

Reader, you may count, by the aid of the telescope, about eighty millions of suns! Suppose we knew all the facts connected with these eighty millions of suns. Or Or suppose a volume for each of the thirty worlds connected with each sun, it would make a work having thirty times eighty millions of volumes; but this could not begin to describe creation. Astronomers tell us that if we could look over all the systems that exist, and then should all the stars and all the suns we can now look at be struck into annihilation, we could not miss them, we could not miss eighty millions of suns, any more than we could miss the removal of one green leaf,

when from the mountain top we look over the verdure of a waving and endless forest!

Reader, man never believes an endless number of volumes filled with innumerable absurdities, after the truth has been made plain before him, except in matters of religion. Man does not swallow falsehood with uniform avidity, except to get clear of the Bible or its purest precepts.

"Men love darkness rather than light." Love for darkness and disrelish for light, is depravity.

If man is naturally unlovely, he has fallen; for he did not fall impure from the hands of his Creator.

Impurity cannot enter heaven to stay there without alteration.

Postscript.-Some in every age who had cast away the Book of God, and who were walking (with their backs on ceaseless felicity) after Satan, have been known to turn, and to prize unending joy, and to inquire after regeneration.

We do not know but that some reader, after other investigation, may make the most important of all inquiries, such as

What is conversion?

What is a change of heart?

How is any one to become a Christian?

What is it to become a child of God?

How is any one to obtain the pardon of all his sins? What is coming to God?

How are we to obtain the new birth?

They

Reader, the new birth, change of heart, conversion, regeneration, &c. &c., all mean the same thing. are all different expressions for the same transactions. This action or event we wish to place before you in