284 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF 



the earlier ages of man's history. Its progress in this respect 

 may not be clearly seen at a particular time, through the ob- 

 scuring effect of temporary and accidental causes ; but that 

 the tendency of the physical improvements wrought by man 

 upon the surface, and of the mechanic movements which he 

 invents for the saving of his own labour, is to improve the 

 daily comforts, and allow room for the intellectual and moral 

 advancement of earth's children, cannot be denied without 

 something like flying in the face of Providence itself. These 

 improvements, then, thus partly wrought out by the exertions 

 of the present ra^e, I conceive as at once preparations for, and 

 causes of, the possible development of higher types of humanity, 

 beings less strong in the impulsive parts of our nature, 

 physical nature giving less matter for that nature to contend 

 with and subdue to its needs, more strong in the reasoning 

 and the moral, because there will be less of the opposite to 

 give these marring or check, more fitted for the delights of 

 social life, because society will then present less to dread and 

 more to love. 



The history and constitution of the world have now been 

 hypothetically explained, according to the best lights which a 

 humble individual has found within the reach of his perceptive 

 and reasoning faculties. We have seen a system in which all 

 is regularity and order, and all flows from, and is obedient to, 

 a divine code of laws of unbending operation. We are to 

 understand from what has been laid before us, that man, 

 with his varied mental powers and impulses, is a natural 

 problem, of which the elements can be taken cognizance of by 

 science, and that all the secular destinies of our race, from 

 generation to generation, are but evolutions of a law statuted 

 and sustained in action by an All-wise Deity. To some, before 

 just reflection, it appears as a dreary view of the divine economy 

 of our world, as if it placed God at an immeasurable distance 

 from his creatures, and left them without refuge or remedy 

 from the numberless ills that "flesh is heir to," and which no 

 one can hope altogether to escape. But in reality, God may 

 be presumed to be revealed to us in every one of the pheno- 

 mena of the system, in the suspension of globes in space, in 

 the degradation of rocks and the upthrowing of mountains, in 

 the development of plants and animals, in each movement of 

 our minds, and in all that we enjoy and suffer, seeing that, 

 the system requiring a sustainer as well as an originator, He 

 must be continually present in every part of it, albeit He does 



