Our children's heritage in prospect long; These are our hopes, high-minded hopes and strong; To lands where southern constellations shine," But then, again, the difficulties and the dis couragements start up in gloomy procession. You have committed yourself to a work of doubt and difficulty. The vast wilderness seems to have received you into its wide arms, and then to have closed them upon you, and to have finally shut you out from all communication with friendly humanity. Your encampment forms but a little speck in the vast waste of uninhabited country. Pictures are internally painted of future farms, and numerous folds, and hospitable neighbours ever arriving and continuing with you; but the dreary reality is generally too strong to permit of the long existence of such airy comforts. On all such occasions how infinitely superior is the Christian Emigrant to the mere worldly one? The good man, let his future course and fare be what it may, has a hope of a still further future, that shines forth like the far sunlight in the perspective of some darkly painted picture. If he has obeyed what he has conceived to be a clear call of duty in this adventure, then, be its result what it may, it cannot greatly disturb him. If God seems to have called him out of a land of plenty into a waste of present barrenness, he is graciously assured that, even although the herb and the plant, the blade and the full ear, may never spring up so abundantly in this land, he is certain to be called upon to make one other removal, without misgiving or anxiety as to the result. Here he may thrive, or he may be unprosperous; there, no doubt hangs over his course-for One who cannot be fallible has assured him of a final home in a country with an abiding city. In this, and the preceding chapters, we have taken such a general survey of the arrangements and the designs of creation, that, while bringing forward to your view such portions of knowledge as may have been most likely to interest your curiosity, and stimulate your research, yet, at the same time, every illustration might lead to inferences expressed, or merely hinted at, relating to the contrivance, upholding power, and beneficence of the Great Author of all. While it is of much temporal importance that habits of observation and scientific research should be cultivated, since God has evidently suspended the comforts and welfare of men in communities on such conditions, it is to the higher benefit of such studies upon the individual mind that we are chiefly anxious to draw your attention, ere we terminate these earlier chapters. Surely the preceding instances of God's working all things together for good cannot have been produced without some effect. To bring home the value of the knowledge we have been glancing at, let us imagine the case of two travellers setting out to recruit their health or to enjoy relaxation; and, again, the similar case of two emigrants leaving home and friends, to found the former, and find the latter, in a distant country. One of the two, in each case, shall be wealthy compared with the other; but the wealthier in this world's goods shall have trusted entirely to his gold for his happiness, and the means of procuring him increased stores and larger enterprises in the foreign land. The poorer man, however, shall have cultivated his mind, observed all things, imagined much, and pondered more. He shall have discovered an unspent treasure in his own delightful perceptions of the unlimited goodness and unbounded power of that Great Being whom he is not afraid to style his God. Now, let any enlightened mind apportion to each of the two the fair expectation of happiness which experience has warranted. The wealthy but ignorant traveller will be perpetually uneasy, craving for the luxuries and ease he has left behind him; anxiously alluding to his gold in order to secure respect amongst strangers; gazing on the wonders of the way with stolid indifference, or a secret fear of betraying his unseemly ignorance, and therefore bound to a most unwelcome silence. But, on the other hand, the modest and undowered fellow-traveller will be enjoying a perpetual feast of inward delights. He will forget his difficulties, in the past, or in prospect, and merge his individuality in the immensity of those operations of Divine Beneficence by which he is surrounded. The observation of the calm self-reliance of the Being whom men substitutively call "Nature," the peacefulness of his path, the energetic regularity of his movements, the unmeasured scale of his operations, the certainty with which his long pre-considered objects are attained, the uncomprehended mightiness, or the inconceivable minuteness of the means he selects for their accomplishment,-all these thoughts constantly pouring in upon his mind like a spring-tide, will render him rich indeed in that wealth which no lapse of time can depreciate, no change of place endanger, and no depravity of mankind steal away from him. This is the man for whom his Creator would seem to have spread out his marvels; this is the man who takes the true measure of his being; this is the man who converses, like his first progenitor, with God in his garden of the world; and this is the man who, though now a little lower than the angels, may hope, through the grace of his Redeemer, finally to walk discoursing with them amidst the unveiled wonders of a sinless heaven! THE EMIGRANT'S HYMN. Father, can I ever be Ev'n on Ocean far from Thee? Let the madden'd billows bound, Ev'n on Ocean far from Thee! Ah! but in the dreary Wild Shall I be thy favoured child? Where the rivers never bore Nor a swift and swelling sail To the breeze which summer lends ; When it leapt to wondering earth J. R. L. |