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¬to guess at :? Does it point steadily to the poles when in the bowels of the earth, and does it only begin to shift and vary when it comes into contact with unsettled and restless man? The Great First Cause is manifest: but what are the principles which govern such marvellous effects? When the philosopher is thus lost, and driven back within the limits of his faculties, the ocean is not less an object of sublime contem- plation; we see it then with all its roaring multi- tude of waves obsequious to the command of God for the happiness of man — Without it, though propitiation for sin might, by divine mercy, have been accomplished in Palestine, yet all the hu- manizing light of the Gospel would have been eclipsed, and its benign influence upon our fallen condition must have been lost; the weary foot of the pilgrim or missionary could never have traversed such remote regions; India could not now be hearing the sacred voice of divine truth, and America, instead of starting up, as it were, at once throughout her United States, into ci- vilized and moral existence, might, for acres to ¬B J come. ¬
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