to that CREATOR, a mere instrument, whilst the CREATOR Himself is the GRAND and ONLY PRINCIPAL? The real fact therefore is, that GOD alone sees independantly, and that all other substances, whether of mind or matter, are merely dependant instruments for communicating the blessings of sight to His otherwise blind and sightless creatures.
But enough, I trust, has been said to convince you of the natural and temporal uses of the eye; and how infinitely therefore you are indebted to the DIVINE AUTHOR of your being for a gift of such surpassing excellency, by virtue of which you are enabled to enjoy all the blessings of light, all the gratifications resulting from a view of the sublime and beautiful objects of creation, and, what is of still higher importance, to admit into yourself the materials necessary to form intellectual ideas; and thus, by transplanting the images of the natural and visible things of this lower world into the interiors of your constitution, to promote the birth and growth of that intellectual mind, which is to be your capacity of receiving, of believing in, and enjoying the great realities of that higher and eternal world for which you was created.
Allow me now, therefore, to pass on to the consideration of uses—even more important than those of which I have been treating—by calling your attention, as
