NATURAL THEOLOGY. 213 



cover here ? What design in such a constitution 

 as this ; that the better use we make of our minds, 

 the more does this life appear too short and inade- 

 quate to our feelings ? 



A. The system of Providence would lead us to 

 conclude from what we generally see, that capacities 

 are not given in vain. They are not made systemat- 

 ically and as a settled course to stop before they 

 have finished their work, and reached their highest 

 consummation. Generally, the animal being does 

 not perish till its powers are perfectly developed ; 

 nor the tree till it has reached its height. If there- 

 fore man has capacities of higher improvement than 

 the present world unfolds, the presumption on natural 

 principles is, that this life is to be succeeded by an- 

 other. We see the best of the creatures of God, 

 universally stopped in their career ; stopped by infir- 

 mity and death ; stopped in their progress ; stopped 

 at the period of their most pleasing and rapid prog- 

 ress. Not so with the brute. His powers have no 

 progress that we know of. He has reached the end 

 of his faculties, to all appearance, long before he 

 dies. The plant has reached the termination of its 

 vegetative powers of bloom and of fruit bearing, be- 

 fore it decays. But man is stopped. The tree falls 

 in mid vigor. The sun goes down at noon. 



T. But is there any natural example to corres- 

 pond to the delightful and glorious anticipation of 

 a renewed period of existence for those capacities of 

 improvement, which in this life are arrested in their 

 progress ? 



