Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/332



ONSTANT mention is made in the Holy Word, of terms which prove that the Lord designed us to exercise our powers of observation and reflection upon every subject we read. And although the book of God is not especially designed to instruct us in science and philosophy, yet the better we understand the principles of natural wisdom, the more fully shall we appreciate the principles of divine wisdom; for we shall be led to see that all natural science is in accordance with divine science; and the world which we inhabit, with the objects we behold, yea, and all the parts in our fearfully and wonderfully constructed frames, are but the effects of causes which exist in the eternal world. If it should be asked, "Why are not those causes first revealed to us, that we may be the better qualified to follow them to their visible effects?" it may be answered, "That infinite wisdom, has, in this, as in everything else, decreed, that the first shall be last, and the last first." We might ask, with as much propriety, "Why do not children come at once to the spontaneous exercise of all their powers, which are developed by care and unremitting culture, and only at mature age? Truth is the more valuable as it is received in its first principles, and as those principles are suffered to develop themselves progressively—"first the blade, then the ear, after that, the full