Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/29

 vicegerent, the queen of the revolving heavens, and in her waxing and waning and singular movement among the stars was the perpetual occasion of admiring and adoring curiosity. Nature in all her forms was wonderful; Nature in her beneficent forms was to be loved and worshipped; and being, as Nature is, indifferent to morality, bestowing prosperity on principles which make no demands on chastity or equity, she is, in one form or other, the divinity on whose shrine in all ages the favoured sections of society have always gladly paid their homage. Where Nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self-denial. The object of life is the pursuit of wealth and the pleasures which wealth can purchase; and the rules for our practical guidance are the laws, as the economists say, by which wealth can be acquired.

It is an excellent creed for those who have the happiness to profit by it, and will have its followers to the end of time. In these later ages it connects itself with the natural sciences, progress of the intellect, specious shadows of all kinds which will not interfere with its supreme management of political arrangements. In Egypt, where knowledge was in its rudiments, every natural force, the minutest plant or animal, which influenced human fortunes for good or evil, came in for a niche in the shrine of the temples of the sun and moon. Snakes and crocodiles, dogs, cats, cranes, and beetles were propitiated by sacrifices, by laboured ceremonials of laudation; nothing living was too mean to find a place in the omnivorous devotionalism of the Egyptian clergy. We, in these days, proud as we may be of our intellectual advances, need not ridicule popular