Republican vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1857, 1857-12-05
Natural Evidences Of the Truth Of Re-
Vealed Religion.

| Natural Evidences Of the Truth Of Re-
yealed Religion.
Edward Everett, in his eloquent address
recently delivered before the Agriculture
Society at Buffalo, said:
"a celebrated skeptical philosopher of tn
last century-the historian though
to demolish the credbility of the Chrstia,
Revelation by the concise argument; Il
/ is contrary to experience that miracle
should be true, but not contrary to expert
ence that testimony should be false" Th,
last part of the proposition, especially in ;
free country, Oh the eve ola popular election
is, unhappily, too well founded !; but in wha
book worms dusty cell, tape tied with tn,
cob webs of ages, where the light of real life
and nature never forced its way--in wha
pedant's school, where deaf ears listen to the
dumb lips, aud blind followers are led by
blind gudes-did lie learn that it is contrar,
to experience that miracle should be true
Most certainly he never learned it from reaper
or sower-from dumb animal or rational
man connected with husbandry. Poor Red
Jacket, off here on Buffalo Greek, if he
could have comprehcnded the terms of the
proposition, would have treated it with scorn.
Contrary to experience that phenomena
should exist which we cannot trace to causes
pereeptible to the human sense or conceiya-
Die by human thought 1t would be much
nearer the truth to say that within the hus-
bandman's experience there are no phenom-
ena which can be nationally traced to any
thing but the instant energy of creative pow
er.
did this philosopher ever contemplate
the landscape at the close of the year, when
seeds, and grains aud fruits have ripened,
and stalks have witLered, and leaves have
fallen, and Winter has forced her icy curb
even into the roaring jaws of Niagara, and
sheeted half a continent with her glittering
shroud, and all this teeming vegetation and
organized life are locked III 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 riycted their crystal bolts up
on the door of natures scpulchre, when
the sun at length begins to wheel in higher
circles through the sky, and softer winds
to breathe through melting snow,-did he
ever behold the long hidden earth at length
appear, and soon the tiuid grass peep forth,
and anon the Autumndl wheat begin to
paint the field land velvet leaflets to burst
from purple buds, throughout the reyiving
forest and then the mellow soil to open its
fruitful bosom to every grain aud seed
dropped from the planters hand, buried but
to spring up again, clothed with a new mys-
FERROUS being; and then, as more feryia
suns iuhame the air, and softer showers
distil from the clouds, and gentler dews
string their pearls on twig and tendril, 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 his kind arrayed in myri-
ad-tinted garments, instinct with circulating
life seven millions of counted leaves upon
single tree, each of which is system
whose exquisite complication puts to shame
the shrewdest cunning of the human hand,
every planted seed an & rain, which has
been loaned to the earth, compounding
usury, thirty, sixty, a hundred fold,
all harmoniously adapted to the susten-
ance Of living nature-the bread of hun
cry world, here titled corn6eld, whose
yellow blades are nodding with the food of
man there an implanted wildern ess 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 tic hum
bier families of animated nature the sol
emn elephant, the browsing deer. the wild
pigeon, whose Tutoring caravan darkens
the heaven, the merry squirrel, who bounds
from branch to branch, in the joy of his lit
tie life has he seen all this, does he see it
every year. and month and day, does be
live aud move and breathe, and think, in
this atmosphere of wonder-himself the
greatest wonder of ALL whose smallest fibre
aud faintest pulsation is as much mystery
as the blazing glories of Orion's belt--and
does he still maintain that miracle is con-
trary to experience! If he has, and if he
does. let him 90, in the name Of heaven,
and say that it is contrary to experience
that the August Power which turns the
clods of the earth into the daily bread of a
thousand million souls could feed five thou
sand in the wilderness -