and the giddy circles of dissipation, for the calm and recollection of a studious retirement. Or if he would examine into the powers and faculties of his own mind, and curiously trace its operations, he will find it still more necessary to withdraw from the noise and bustle of life, and to make his court to silence and solitude.

If then an abstraction from the busy multitude be a needful preliminary in order successfully to investigate the laws of quantity, the properties of matter, or the operations of our own minds, objects which lie in some measure within the reach of our senses or consciousness; it would be highly irrational to suppose it less requisite, when we would trace His being and perfections who dwelleth in light inaccessible, whose nature is transcendent, and whose attributes are infinite.

J

Yet this reasoning, however cogent and irresistible it appears, will, it may be feared, have little influence upon some who, though they would not expect to become

profound metaphysicians, or learned in natural science, without frequent intervals of retired study, will vainly pretend to a sufficient knowledge of the great Author of nature, though they have never employed any stated portion of their time for its attainment; or at most have never gone beyond a formal appearance once in seven days, in some church or other place of religious resort, merely from a sense of decorum, or in conformity to the custom of those around them.

This conceit of native and unacquired mental endowments may, in some cases, be suffered to pass without much censure. That a poet, for instance, is born such, and not produced by art or study, is an old notion, whose truth it is not worth the while to dispute, as it is of little consequence whether it be true or false. But for a man to imagine himself in possession of the highest wisdom, who has never made any serious efforts to attain it; to suppose that the knowledge of God is with him original and

innate, which to the ancient poet Simonides, in proportion as he urged his enquiries, seemed the more to elude them*, is a presumption equally contrary to reason and experience, and deserves to be branded as the grossest enthusiasm.

The first step to true wisdom is to feel the want of it, and the next is a willingness to bestow the pains which are necessary to obtain it; without these previous dispositions, no outward advantages are sufficient to secure the acquisition. A man, thus unqualified, may retire into the country, but he will grow no wiser there than he was before in town. If he happen to be a philosopher, he will proceed, in his usual manner, to amuse himself with the effects, without prosecuting his enquiries to their just issue in the knowledge and adoration of the first cause; if he be a man of activity, he will betake himself to his sports or his husbandry; and if an indolent epicure, he will

* Vide Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. i. § 22.

sink down into a life of low indulgence. There is no magical virtue in fields or groves, no local inspiration, which will elevate an unprepared mind from things natural to moral, from matter to spirit, and from the creature to the Creator.

For although it is true that God is sometimes found of them who seek him not, it is only to those who diligently seek him, that a promise is made of finding him *. To the former it is commonly in vain that the heavens declare his glory, and the firmament sheweth his handy work; they have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, and their hearts do not understand: while to the latter, the most familiar scenes of nature, and every object around them, yields a divine attestation; they find

Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

It is to these, and such as these, whose minds are in some degree awake to religion,

* Prov. ii. 3-3.

who are serious and earnest in their search after Him with whom they are most concerned to be acquainted, and who, at the same time, are not without some tincture of general literature, that I would address the subsequent reflections; as it is to them only that they can be supposed to prove either useful or acceptable.

But before we proceed to the enquiry now before us, it is proper to apprize the reader, that it is not by dint of reason only, and by heaping one argument upon another, that we expect to climb to heaven, and there to pry into the divine nature and will; an attempt which, as it would bear some resemblance to that of the fabled giants of old, would be sure to resemble it in its issue:

Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam,

Scilicet, atque Ossæ frondosum involvere Olympum : Ter pater extructos disjecit fulmine montes*.

VIRGIL.

* On Pelion, thrice to heave they all essay'd Ossa, and thrice on Ossa's tow'ring head To roll Olympus up with all his shade: