28 FEB 33 "Nature, rightly studied, must disclose the Creator, but the sights which we see are according to the spirit that we bring to the investigation. Standing within a cathedral, and looking through its stained and figured windows towards the light, we behold the forms and colours by the light. Standing outside and gazing at the same windows, we see nothing but a blurred and indistinct enamelling. "Thus the soul, standing within the great cathedral of God's material world, and looking through it upward to the light, beholds the meaning of its forms and colours; but standing without, and studying nature in detail, not with reference to the light pouring through it from God, but for itself alone, there is nothing better seen than the mere material enamelling." CHEEVER. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. No humble words of mine are needed to introduce another popular work of Mr. Crowther's to the wide circle of readers who already know and appreciate his previous volumes. The interest of the latter will be found fully sustained, if not surpassed, in the present. Few have succeeded, as he has, in bringing out the harmonious utterances in the two great volumes of Nature and Revelation; and making the one the exponent and interpreter of the other. I have had personally the pleasure and gratification on several occasions of hearing his prelections, in the shape of popular lectures: some of these, I believe, embodied and extended in the pages which follow. I can testify to the interest they secured from attentive audiences; the one element of the living voice and a pleasant colloquial method in communicating his scientific facts and their lessons, being alone and necessarily wanting. May the present book obtain the welcome due to it. I feel assured the accomplished author can neither write nor speak in vain. I think it only proper to add, that though I have every confidence in his accuracy as well as ability, yet for some hypothetical and theoretic views, in themselves ingenious and interesting,-it may possibly even be, for some scientific conclusions, -I do not hold myself responsible. It is to the general character of the book and its writer I very cordially subscribe. |