Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,
Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
Yet so delightful mix’d, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combin’d;
Shade, unperceiv’d, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.”
He who governs the whole frame of nature, and directs and regulates these successive changes, must possess almighty power, without which, he would be infinitely inadequate to the task. He who made the celestial orbs of such a prodigious bulk, and whirls them round with an almost incredible swiftness, causing the regular return of day and night, summer and winter, what can he not do? None among the mighty host of heaven, or among the inhabitants of the earth, can resist his power, or stay his arm when lifted up. He who created all things out of nothing, could, if he pleased, extinguish the lights of heaven, and shake the solid earth to atoms. How easily, then, can he stop our breath, break the slender thread of life, dissolve our feeble frame, or hurl guilty and impenitent sinners into the pit of destruction! He who brought darkness for the space of three days upon the Egyptians, and a dreadful tempest of forty days and forty nights upon the inhabitants of the old world, can make the days of the ungodly darkness, and their nights full of horror. He can strike them with “the arrow that flieth by day,” his swift pointed lightning; or with the pestilential vapors of the night, which “walk in darkness,” and give the deadly stroke unseen.
“Lord, when my thoughtful soul surveys
Fire, air, and earth, and stars and seas,