99? LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. 



loHflr history of the world, throuph all the varieties of its first animal inhabitants, and 

 the deluges and convulsions which destroyed them, as a record of the prepara- 

 tion of the world, of its surface, its atmosphere, its minerals, and the whole system of 

 tlie jrlobe, that it mif?ht be a fit habitation for a beinj? exercisinj? tlie various functions 

 which have this evening; been described to you. And it gives an elevated view of his 

 destiny to look back npon this long preparation, and to trace his very slow progress, 

 ever towards the improvement of his nature. 



** If geology furnishes us with illustrations of the old changes of the earth ; 

 an inspection of the state of man in various parts of the globe shews us illustrations 

 of all the stops of his progress of six thousand years. 



** Even now we behold him in some regions hardly elevated above the brute 

 creation. In countries a little more advanced we see him practising some rude arts, 

 and contending for his possessions. In others we see him arrived at a sort of chival- 

 rous splendour, but selfish and unjust and sensual. In other regions, including the 

 most advanced countries of Europe, the chivalrous character having long given place 

 to one more calculating, we perceive, although yet but faintly, the reason of man 

 called into exercise, and slowly attaining to great truths in morals and in policy. 



'* There is nothing in geology more marvellous, nothing which is more calculated 

 to excite incredulity, than there is in the slow progress of man towards good. It has 

 pleased the Great Creator from time to time to permit exalted minds to point to 

 philosophical truths, which men have not fully attained to until many centuries 

 afterward. Above all, it pleased Him to send us one Instructor whose doctrines and 

 whose life were so pure that they throw all mere human glory into insignificance,— 

 and yet whose life, whose morality, are, if the truth must be spoken, marred by the 

 constant and avowed practices of even the most advanced, and the proudest nations 

 towards one another ; and so imperfectly practised by individuals towards their 

 neighbours that, however cherished in some pure and holy breasts, there is actually 

 no community of men yet existing which really and truly deserves the exalted name 

 of Christian. 



** But slowly as man's nature has gone on in the path of improvement, it is every 

 hour improving. Every century is ashamed of at least a few of the cries of the 

 one which preceded it : and the time will come, when even our own age, dis- 

 tinguished as it is, must be referred to as exhibiting singular remnants of barbarism, 

 imperfections in national and individual character, which will then have been 

 shamed away from the face of society. 



" It is not possible, seeing the amazing movement around us, to be dead to all 

 desire of lifting up the curtain of futurity, and surveying the great progress of man 

 and of human improvement, and the ultimate civilization of the whole of this earth. 

 Yet man, in this frame of bones and muscles, and vessels, and nerves, which we have 

 been examining, is capable of it. 



"We feel, while we contemplate such a course only in imagination, that the 

 prospect is raised out of the mists of oppression and crime which have constituted so 

 much of man's past history. We may surely indulge in elevated visions of a time 

 when christian nations will visit other lands as benefactors, rather than as plunder- 

 ers ; — and when the older countries of the earth, then advanced beyond what we can 

 now conceive, will rejoice over every new community rising to the blessings of civi- 

 lization, purer morals, and intellectual dignity. 



'* Humble, then, as are the materials of tlie human frame — the mere dust of the 

 earth — it is the mansion of certain functions ministering to an intelligence : and 

 this intelligence is not merely for the direction of the movements of the body, and 

 for inventing arts of seeking and preparing food, nor for carrying on mere barter 

 and exchange, and acquiring dominion over certain portions of tlie surface of the 

 earth, or of its precious minerals. There is a higher end. 



" As reasonable observers, we cannot but ask what the end is. — ^To breathe, to 

 eat, to grow, to suffer pain and pleasure, to attempt much and to perform little, 

 to look about us for a few years, and leave designs unfinished, inquiries unsatisfied, 

 and to find ourselves declining by insensible degrees into all the infirmities and 

 humiUations of age, and, after some sixty or seventy years, to die — important as it 

 seems in the acting, is little more than a vain and empty career, in which we only 

 acknowledge, at every step, that tliis body is frail and that it is mortal. 



•' If we breathe, tlierefore, if we digest, if blood flows in our arteries and veins, if 



