MOEAL RESULTS. 187 



into form. Arithmetic could state, if we knew it, 

 tlie connexion between the birth of a babe which 



iw the light an hour ago, and the time when the 

 1 laments of our astral system began to resolve 

 themselves into those countless orbs, one of which 

 is Man's, the stage of his long descended history, 

 and the bounds within which all his secular 

 phenomena must ever be confined. The unit of 

 taeli individuality, great or humble in social 

 regard, takes a fixed place in that march of life 

 V. hich rose luireckoned ages ago, and now goes 



u to a " weird," wliich no wizard has pretended 

 TO know. We feel that, amidst all the disgrace of 



rouble and of trespass, we are still the first form 



f active being after the Greatest, and therefore 

 may well be assured that, immeasurable as is our 

 distance from God, we are still immediately re- 

 garded and cared for by him. Surely there is 

 here much to soothe and to encourage. It may 

 be that the individual often suffers innocently to 

 appearance in oiu- present sphere ; but then he is 

 part of a system of assured benevolence and jus- 

 tice : having faith in this, he is safe. It may be, 

 as some one has suggested, that there is not only 

 a term of life to the indiA*idual, but to the species, 

 and that when the proper time comes, the prolific 

 energ\- being exhausted, man is transferred to 

 the list of extinct forms. Strange thought, 



