DESIGN IN THE CREATION OF MAN. Ill 



field need his protection. His power is not wanted 

 to prevent the increase of noxious animals ; for his 

 Creator has chosen other and more humble in- 

 struments to effect such an ignoble purpose. The 

 rapacious tribes of quadrupeds, of birds, and of 

 insects, keep their respective classes within due 

 limits, while it has been ordained that these animal 

 destroyers should propagate slowly and sparingly 

 We find, moreover, that, in countries very thinly 

 inhabited, there is no disproportion between those 

 animals which are predacious, and such as live 

 upon vegetables. Man, in short, although the 

 noblest work of nature, is yet so unnecessary to her 

 operations, and so disconnected with all those designs 

 she is carrying on in the material world, that his 

 absence from the earth would not be missed. He 

 rather impedes than advances the free developement 

 of her works. In this point of view he is inferior to 

 the very worm he treads upon ; the extermination 

 of whose race would render the earth unfruitful, and 

 bring famine and death upon its inhabitants. It 

 may be argued, indeed, that the design of the Creator, 

 in calling into existence this last and best of his 

 works, was to give him happiness, to fill him with 

 delight at the wonders which surrounded him, and 

 that he should do good to such of his creatures as 

 he was to govern. But had he been created solely 

 for those purposes, we should have seen them ac- 

 complished ; because imperfection in the means for 

 accomplishing the end belongs not to the Omnipotent 

 Being. What, in short, do we actually see? Human 

 happiness is a shadow. The mass of mankind are 

 totally indifferent to the wonders of creation ; and 



