Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.”
[35]. Man will, unquestionably, by taking an extensive range in the contemplation of nature, proportionably enlarge his intuitive conceptions of the attributes of her Almighty First Cause; of whose transcendently exalted existence, the study of his own being, one of nature’s greatest works, will have taught him the reality: and a due knowledge of himself, alone, will also instruct him in the dependent nature of his condition, and the duties resulting from that state of dependence, in his humble relation to the Supreme being.
Mr. Smart, in the poem before quoted, has prettily expressed this idea, in the following lines:—
“Vain were th’ attempt, and impious, to trace
Thro’ all his works th’ Artificer Divine—
And tho’ no shining sun, nor twinkling star,
Bedeck’d the crimson curtains of the sky;