Grace and Nature.

GRACE AND NATURE.

WHEN St. Paul exhorts Christians to improve their grace, (or the spiritual aids which God bestows on reasonable creatures,) he says, “Rejoice evermore, and in every thing give thanks to the Lord.” Gratitude, which naturally utters its feelings in praise, is so essential a part of Christian worship, that the contrary disposition is, by this apostle, represented as characteristic of obdurate Pagans: “They are inexcusable,” said he, “because having known God,” by his works, “they did not glorify him as God,” nor render him due praise. They forgot their greatest benefactor, and behaved like Atheists in refusing him the tribute of adoration. If grace leads us to celebrate the God of all grace, nature, in like manner, calls upon us to celebrate her invisible Author. “It is necessary,” says M. de Luc, in his History of the Earth, “daily to recall men to the original bias of human nature, which certainly was the admiration of the universe. That every step we advance in discoveries should be compared with our ideas of a wise and intelligent Cause,” &c. To follow the advice of this physician, is to proceed by the light of the universe, to the knowledge of her author. By this mean, religion walks hand in hand with philosophy, and grace and nature are united.