Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1857-11-18
Natural Evidences of the Truth of Revealed
RELIGION.

| Edward Everett, in his eloquent address re-
Gently delivered before the Agricultural Society
at Buffalo, said:
"A celebrated skeptical philosopher ofthe last
century-the historian Huine-tbought to de-
molish the credibility of the Christian Reyela-
ton by the concise argument: ut is contrary
to experience that miracle should be true, but
not contrary to experience that testimony should
be false" The last part of the proposition, es-
pecially in free country, on the eve of popu-
lar election, is, unhappily, too well founded
but in what book-worm's dusty cell, tape-tried
with the cob.webs of ages, where the light Of
real life and nature never forced its way-in
what pedant's school, where deaf ears listen to
the dumb lips, and blind followers are led by
blind guides,--did he learn that it is contrary
to experience that miracle should be true2-
Most certainly he never learned it from sower
or reaper-from dumb animal or rational man
connected with husbandry. Poor Red Jacket,
off here on Buffalo Greek, if he could have COM
pretended the terms of the proposition, would
have treated it with scorn. Contrary to expe-
rience that phenomena should exist which we
cannot trace to causes perceptible to the human
sense, or conceivable by human thought! ls
would be much nearer the truth to say that
within the husbandman's experience there are
no phenomens which can be nationally traced to
anything but the instant energy Ofcreative pow
power.
"Did this philosopher ever contemplate the
landscape at the close of the year, when seeds and
grains, and fruits have ripened, and stalks have
wtbered. and leaves have fallen, and Winter
has forced her icy curb even into the roaring
Jaws of Niagara, and sheeted half a continent 10
her glittering shroud, and all this teeming vege-
tation and organized life are locked in cold and
marble obstruction and, after week upon week
and month upon month have swept, with sleet,
and chilly rain, and bowling storm, over the
earth, and rivited their crystal bolts upon the
door of natures sepulchre, when the sun at
length begins to wheel in higher circles through
the sky, and softer winds to breathe through
melting snow,-did lie ever behold the long
hidden earth at length appear, and soon the tmld
grass peep forth, and anon the Autumnal wheat
begin to paint the field, and velvet leaflets to
burst from purple buds, throughout the reviving
Forest and then the mellow soil to open its fruit
full bosom to every grain aud seed dropped from
the planters hand, buried but to spring up
again, clothed with new mysterious being;
and then, as more fervid suns infame the air,
and softer showers distil from the clouds, and
gentler dews string their pearls on twig and
tendri, did he ever watch the ripening grain
and fruit, pendant from stalk, and vine and tree;
the meadow, the field, the pasture, the grove,
each after bis kind arrayed in myriad-tinted gar
ments, instinct with circulating life; seven mil.
lions of counted leaves on single tree, each of
which is a system whose exquisite complication
puts to shame the shrewdest cunning of the hu-
man hand, every planted seed and grain, which
had been loaned to the earth, compromising it's
pious usury, thirty, sixty, hundred fold.-all
harmoniously adapted to the sustenance OF liv-
ing nature-the bread ofa hungry world here
titled cornfeld, whose yellow blades are nod
ding with the food OF man; there an implanted
wilderness the great Fathers farm.-where
he "who hears the ravens cry" has cultivated,
with his own hand, his merciful crop of berries,
and nuts, and acorns, and seeds, for the hum
5er families of animated nature; the solemn
elephant, the browsing deer, the wild pig
con, whose futtering caravan darkensj the
sky; the merry squirrel, who bounds from
branch to branch, in the JOY of his little life;
has he seen all this, does he sec it every year,
and month and day, does he live and move and
breathe and think, in this atmosphere of wOn-
der-himself the greatest wonder of all, whose
smallest fibre and faintest pulsation is as much
q mystery as the blazing glories Of Orion's belt
and does he still maintain that miracle is
contrary to experienced If he has, and if he
does, let him go, in The name ofheaven, and say
that it is contrary to experience that the August
Power which turns the clods of the earth into
the daily bread of thousand million souls could
feed five thousand in the wilderness"