The Literary Tournament

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874. Excerpt: ... THE LITERARY TOURNAMENT. THE BEAUTIES OF NATUKE. By No. 100. Cifre son del Suo volere Quanto il mondo in se comprende: Parian 1'opre; e poi s'intende Gib, che in esse egli celb. Metaitario. There are two great Books, and both are full of beauty. They are written in different characters; but the Author of both is God. The subject of both is His glory, His greatness, His mercy, and His love. But this glory, this greatness, this mercy, and this love, are expressed differently. In one Book, the wondrous story is told in ink: here the sentiments are God's; but the writing is man's. In the other, the sentiments are God's, and the writing is God's: the characters are the trees, the flowers, the animals, birds and insects, the beauties of the earth, the glories of the starry firmament, and all created things, from man himself to the smallest worm that burrows in the ground. The greater of these Books is that in which the will and attributes of the Creator are told in language most intelligible to the creature. This is the key to the other Book: without the aid of this greater work, ve could not interpret B one page of the lesser volume, which is to it like a glorious accompaniment to heart-stirring words. Deprived of the one, the other could never be rightly understood; it might please in its tender harmonies, or terrify in its terrible; but its true meaning, its greatest beauty, must ever be lost to those, Who on God's works no seal of Godhead find. Nature, revelation, and all true science, are joined hand in hand, corroborating and strengthening each other. Science tells us that when this globe, terraqueous, first rolled forward on its course, it was a mass of fiery gas, and we learn from Genesis that it was without form, and void. As yet there was no b...