SECT.  XVI.  Of Heaven.

It is time to lift up our eyes to heaven.  What power has built over our heads so vast and so magnificent an arch?  What a stupendous variety of admirable objects is here?  It is, no doubt, to present us with a noble spectacle that an Omnipotent Hand has set before our eyes so great and so bright objects.  It is in order to raise our admiration of heaven, says Tully, that God made man unlike the rest of animals.  He stands upright, and lifts up his head, that he may be employed about the things that were above him.  Sometimes we see a duskish azure sky, where the purest fires twinkle.  Sometimes we behold, in a temperate heaven, the softest colours mixed with such variety as it is not in the power of painting to imitate.  Sometimes we see clouds of all shapes and figures, and of all the brightest colours, which every moment shift that beautiful decoration by the finest accidents and various effects of light.  What does the regular succession of day and night denote?  For so many ages as are past the sun never failed serving men, who cannot live without it.  Many thousand years are elapsed, and the dawn never once missed proclaiming the approach of the day.  It always begins precisely at a certain moment and place.  The sun, says the holy writ, knows where it shall set every day.  By that means it lights, by turns, the two hemispheres, or sides of the earth, and visits all those for whom its beams are designed.  The day is the time for society and labour; the night, wrapping up the earth with its shadow, ends, in its turn, all manner of fatigue and alleviates the toil of the day.  It suspends and quiets all; and spreads silence and sleep everywhere.  By refreshing the bodies it renews the spirits.  Soon after day returns to summon again man to labour and revive all nature.