Nature conceals her mysteries: although ever active, she does not at all times reveal her operations: time, in the course of revolving ages, successively discovers them; and, although always alike and unchanged, they are not always equally known. The insight into these secrets, gained by the intelligence of man, is continually augmenting; and as this furnishes the groundwork of physical science, the results and consequences develop themselves and multiply in proportion. In this spirit it is that we may, in the present day, propound views and hazard new opinions without showing contempt or ingratitude towards those of the ancients. The rudimental knowledge with which they have furnished us, has been the source of our own acquisitions; and in the advantages we thus enjoy, we are their debtors for our very superiority over them. Advanced by their aid to an elevated pitch of intelligence, a slight effort enables us to rise yet higher; and, with less labour, but with less glory also, we take a position superior to them. By these means it is, that we are enabled to discover many things which it was impossible for them to perceive. Our views have acquired more extension; and although they, equally with ourselves, made themselves acquainted with all that it was in their power to discover of nature, their actual amount of knowledge was less, and we see more of her operations than they. How marvellous, then, is this indiscriminating reverence for the opinions of antiquity! It is made a crime to oppose, and a scandal to add to them, as if they alone had left no truths to be discovered by their successors! Is not this treating with indignity the reason of man, and putting it on a par with mere animal instinct? We annihilate the main difference between the two; which is, that the acquisitions of reason are incessantly accumulating, whilst instinct remains ever stationary. The cell of the bee was as exactly constructed a thousand years ago as at this day; and each forms its little hexagon as skilfully at the first attempt, as throughout the whole of its brief existence. It is the same, under this mysterious guidance, with all the productions of the animal creation. Nature instructs her children in proportion to their respective necessities; but this fragile science is lost with the wants to which it owes its birth. Possessing it without study, they are denied the advantage of retaining it; and every time that it is imparted it is new to the artificer, because . . . . nature, having no design but that of maintaining the animal in its position of a limited perfection, inspires it with this necessary knowledge, . . . always equal in degree, lest it should fall into decay; yet never exceeding the allotted measure, lest it should overpass the limits which she has prescribed to its powers. With man, however, it is otherwise. He is formed for infinitude! Wrapped in helpless ignorance during the first stages of existence, he is constantly acquiring knowledge throughout its progress. He derives advantages not only from his own experience, but from that of his predecessors; for he has the power of retaining in his memory all the stores which he has himself acquired, and those which the ancients—who are to him as if ever present—have transmitted in their writings. And, as he thus preserves the knowledge already gained, he has it in his power easily to make additions to it; so that we are in the present day, in a measure, in the same state as the philosophers of old would have been, if they could have survived till now; adding the knowledge which they then possessed to that which their studies would have accumulated through the lapse of intervening times. Thence it is that, by our especial privilege, not only does each individual make daily advances in knowledge, but the whole body of men are, as ages roll on, in a state of constant progress; for the experience of successive generations is ever the same as that of the advancing years of the individual man. The whole human race, throughout the succession of centuries, may thus be considered as one man—ever living, and continually learning; whence we see how groundless is this inordinate deference for the antiquity of philosophy. As old age is the period of life most remote from infancy, who does not perceive that maturity in this ever-existing being is not to be sought for in the times nearest to its birth, but in those the most remote from it? Those whom we call "the ancients" were, in reality, inexperienced in all things, and constituted but the infancy of man; and, as we have added to their acquirements the experience of succeeding ages, it is we who have succeeded to that antiquity which we are called upon to revere in them. Our fathers are entitled to admiration for the improvement they made of their limited advantages; and their deficiencies should be excused, arising, as they did, rather from want of experience than from any defect of intelligence. —Pascal.

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ILLUSTRATION OF Isaiah 40: 11. —"Though no romantic tents appeared," (on the banks of the Muradchai, or Eastern Euphrates,) "we passed several shepherds, probably from the neighbouring villages, carrying in their bosoms the lambs of the flocks they tended. The same scene had already frequently interested us, by presenting the source of the beautiful imagery of the prophet: ‘He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom.’ It is exhibited only at this season of the year, when lambs are frequently brought forth during the day at a distance from the fold. The new-comers, being too weak to follow the flock in its rovings after grass, are carried in the bosom of the shepherd; and not unfrequently they multiply so as to fill his arms before night. They are then taken to the fold, and guarded there until sufficiently strong to ramble with their dams. One of these enclosures, when the sheep return anxiously bleating in the evening from their day’s pasture, and scores of hungry young ones are conducted by shepherd’s boys each to its own mother, presents an amusing scene."—Smith’s Researches in Armenia.

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