Genre:

Review

Publications reviewed:

Townsend 1821

Subjects:

Biblical Authority, Natural Theology, Reading, Education, Providence

    Quotes a passage justifying the book as an aid to the serious study of the Bible: '"The visible world," he remarks with equal truth and piety, "so magnificent and so beautiful, is a temple worthy of God the Creator: the spiritual world, described in the pages of Scriptures, is a temple equally worthy of God the Redeemer. Both equally demonstrate the mercy and the love of the same all-wise Providence to the bodies and the souls of men. [... I]f the researches of science to promote the happiness of the body, or to illustrate the laws and the harmony of the universe, are regarded with favour, in such a manner it is trusted the present attempt will be received, which is intended to promote the happiness of the soul, and to elucidate the great scheme of Almighty God in the moral government of the world"' (314–15). Further quotations stress the book's value for the learned and unlearned alike. A quotation discussing the continued outworkings of divine providence continues: 'He rules over the least as well as the greatest events; and as the beauty of a flower, and the mechanism of an insect, declare the universality of his Providence as a loudly and as plainly as the sun in the heavens, or the moon walking in her brightness; so does the declaration of his own immutable Scripture, that not a sparrow falls unpermitted to the ground, convince the Christian who views the stupendous events recorded in his Bible, that he too is not and cannot be unnoticed nor neglected in the government of the universe' (316).