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may burst into life in all the freshness and vigour of a new birth. This, which is both a more important and a more interesting view, represents winter as the first stage in the processes and developements of the revolving year, and fixes it as the natural commencement of a Work, which has for its object an exhibition of the SACRED PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEASONS.

There is another circumstance, too, which involves no principle, indeed, like the former, but which renders the plan adopted a matter at least of convenient arrangement. Winter is the season in which, although the hand of a beneficent and wonder-working Creator is every where to be distinctly traced, there are fewer objects of interest, in comparison with the other seasons, to arrest the attention, and to engage the mind in devout contemplation of the Divine perfections. An Author, studying to gain the public favour, must, doubtless, regard this as a disadvantage in making his first appearance; but, then, it has this counterbalancing use, that space is thus gained for some necessary introductory papers on the broader and more general cosmical arrangements, which are peculiar to none of the seasons, but common to them all. As the plan of daily reflections, of a certain moderate length, obliges the Author to stretch his literary offspring, as it were, on Procrustes' bed, the convenience of including such papers in the volume devoted to Winter will be readily acknowledged.

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The expressions "contrivance," ingenuity," "compensation for defects," &c., as applied to the operations of the Eternal, seem, in some sense, to detract from the infinite perfection of His character, and to bring the exercise of His attributes too much on a level with the operations of the human mind. But this arises from a defect, not merely in the language, but the conceptions of men; and while we are sensible of the inadequacy of these expressions, we know not how to apply a remedy. In this, the Writer only follows in the track of others.

The Sunday papers contain religious and moral reflections, generally suggested by the subject of discussion on the preceding week.

A few papers have been kindly furnished by ingenious friends, which are distinguished from those of the Author, by being subscribed with their initials.

RUTHWELL MANSE,
October 20, 1836.

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