The Massachusetts spy, and Worcester County advertiser. [volume] ([Worcester, Mass.]) 1825-1831, 1828-06-18
GENERAL SPECTACLE OF THE
UNIVERSE

" Ihere is Tod. The grass OF the val
ley and the cedars of the mountain bless
him. The insect huns his praises. The
elephant salutes him at the dawn Of day
The bird sings for him under the foliage.
Thunder displays his power, and the ocean
declares his immensely. 1t is man alone,
who hath said there is no God -
1t may be said, that man is the manifest
thought of God, and that the universe is his
Imagination rendered sensible. Those who
have admitted the beauty of nature as a
proof of a superior intelligence, should have
remarked a circumstance, which prodigious-
" aggrandizes the sphere ofmiracles. 1t is,
that movement and repose, darkness and
light, the seasons, the march of the stars,
with diverse decorations of the world, are
successive only in appearance, and in roali-
ty are permanent. The scene, which is eff
faced for us, is reprinted for another people
1t is not the spectacle. but only the specta-
tor, who hath changed. God hath known
way, in which to unite absolute and progress
sive duration in his work. The first is plac-
ed in time /; the second in space. BY the
former, the beauties of the universe are one,
infinite, always the same. BY the other,
they are multiplied, finished and renewed.
Without the one, there would have been no
grandeur in the creation. Without the other,
it would have been all monotony. In this
way, time appears to us in new relation.
The least of its fractions becomes COM
| plete whole, which Comprehends every thing,
and in which all things are modified, from
the death of an insect to the birth of a world.
| Every minute is in itself little eternity.
D., ~,
! beautiful accidents ofnature. Suppose that
YOU see at the same time tho 80 hc'.-r- e
! day ana aIt Jne seasons a morning fsprlng
and a morning of autumn night bespan-
| gled with stars, and night covered with
clouds; meadows enamelled with flowers,
and forests robbed of their foliage by storms
plains covered with springing corn, and
gilded with harvest. You will then have a
Just idea Of the universe.
Is it not astonishing, that while you adj
mire the sun, sinking under the arches OF
the west, another beholder observes him
springing from the regions of the morning ?
BY what inconceivable magic is it, that this
ancient luminary that reposes, burning and
fatigued in the dust Of the evening, is the
same youthful planet, that awakens, humid
with dew under the whitening curtains OF
the dawn? At every moment in the day
the sun is rising, in the zenith, or setting in
some portion of the world; or rather, our
senses mock us; and their is truly neither
east, nor meridian, nor west.
Can we conceive, what would be the
spectacle of nature, if it were abandoned to
simple movements of matter? The clouds,
obeying the laws of gravity, would fall per-
Dpndirulnrlv m thn Garth ar W0ulu mount
in pyramids into the upper regions of the air
The moment after, the air, would become
too gross, or too much rarifed for the or
gans of respiration. The moon, too near
or distant from us, would he at one time in
visible, and at another would show herself
all bloody, covered with enormous spots, OF
! filing with her extended orb all the celes,
tial dome. AS if possessed with some wild
vagary, she would either move upon the lIne
Of the ecliptic. or, changing her side, would