THE CORONATION OF WINTER: A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT AMHERST COLLEGE AND MOUNT HOLYOKE SEMINARY, SOON AFTER A REMARKABLE GLACIAL PHENOMENON, IN THE WINTER OF 1845. BY REV. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, LL. D PRESIDENT OF AMEERST COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF BOTH INSTITUTIONS Second Edition. AMHERST: J. S. & C. ADAMS, PRINTERS, 1845. At a meeting this afternoon the undersigned were appointed a committee of the students of the College, to express, in their behalf, the high opinion they entertain of the discourse delivered by you last Sabbath, and to request a copy for publication. M. HENSHAW. Amherst College, January 27, 1845. THE CORONATION OF WINTER. HE CASTETH FORTH HIS ICE LIKE MORSELS.-PSALM 147, xvii. THE eminent saints of ancient times were watchful observers of the objects and operations of nature. In every event they saw the agency of God; and therefore they took delight in its examination. For they could not but receive pleasure from witnessing the manifestations of His wisdom and beneficence, whom they adored and loved. They had not learnt, as we have in modern times, to interpose unbending laws between the Creator and his works, and then, by giving supreme and inherent power to these laws, virtually to remove God away from his creation, into an etherial extramundane sphere of repose and happiness. I do not say that this is the universal feeling at the present day. But it prevails extensively in the church, and still more in the world. The ablest philosophers of modern times do, indeed, maintain that a natural law is nothing more than the uniform mode in which God acts; and that after all, it is not the efficiency of the law, but God's own energy, that keeps all nature in motion that he operates immediately and directly, not remotely and indirectly, in bringing about every event: and that every natural change is as really the work of God, as if the eye of sense could see his hand turning round the wheels of nature. But although the ablest philosophy of modern times has reached this conclusion, the great mass of the community, and even of Christians, are still groping in the darkness of that mechanical system, which ascribes the operations of the natural world to nature's laws, instead of nature's God. By a sort of figure, indeed, it is proper, as the advocates of this system maintain, to speak of God as the Author of natural events, because he originally ordained the laws of nature. But they have no idea that He exerts any direct and immediate agency in bringing them about; and therefore, when they look upon those events, they feel no impression of the presence and active agency of Jeho vah. But how different, as already remarked, were the feelings of |