not only remarkable for fecundity, being the breeder of all the workers, but maintains a superiority over the whole, being more grave in her deportment, seldomer seen, and armed differently from the rest. It is she that gives them the signal when to swarm, when to cluster, and where to hive. Say now, my soul, doth not the wisdom of the Creator greatly appear in the economy of these feeble insects? In subordinating the workers to the dominion of the queen bee, and in enduing her with superiority over them? And no less conspicuous is the wisdom of God in the management of men, in subordinating some under the supremacy of others. If this had not been the case, all had been anarchy and confusion: It is therefore of absolute necessity, in this imperfect state of things, that there should be power and authority, and superiors as well as inferiors, that the great chain of human society may hang as it were by links in uniformity together, and the greatest as well as the least be dependent on one another for mutual support for if all the lower links of a per pendicular chain were cut off from the highest, there would then be no chain; and if, on the other hand, the highest were cut off, the others would fall to the ground: Just so would it be with human society. How much reason have men then to adore the Creator of all for his infinitely wise disposal of human affairs ? 309 CONTEMPLATION X. ON OBSERVING A SWALLOW. WELCOME, Sweet harbinger of summer! Quick as an arrow newly launched from the bow of an Indian thou fliest along. Terrible as the war-hoop sounds in the savage ear, no less so does thy shrill, or twittering note, to that of the insect tribe, which thou now pursuest through the air with open mouth. By whom wert thou awakened from thy long repose, or rather advertised, in distant climes, of the setting in of the insect season in our island, that thou art so opportunely come? Come, while yet the vernal months remain, anxious, as it were, that thou mightest lose no opportunity of improving the precious approaching season. O that I and all men living, who are on our way to the other world would learn a lesson from this bird of passage! even to improve our precious seasons of grace. Strange! that man who is taught more than the beasts of the earth, and made wiser than the fowls of heaven, Job xxxv. 11. should be outdone by the stork in the heaven, the turtle, the crane, and the swallow, which all know and "observe the time of their coming." With these ancient Israel were reproached, who knew not the judgment of the Lord, Jer. viii. 7. And by these may not I, and many a one else, be put to shame? who alas! have too much neglected, and still do, to improve the precious ordinances of the gospel, not only in the spring-time of youth, when every mental power is most lively, and easily impressed; but also in the summer and prime of life. The want of the saving knowledge of the mercy of God, made our blessed Lord and Saviour weep over Jerusalem, saying, "If "thou hadst known, even thou, at least in "this thy day, the things which belong unto "thy peace, but now they are hid from "thine eyes," Luke xix. 42. and the want |