58 ON CHANGES IN THE DISPOSITION 



hands of his Creator, a secondary cause to aid in this 

 progressive melioration. The barren mountain gene- 

 rates the fertile plain : the solid earth itself, which 

 must form the dwelling place of Man, is enlarged, and 

 that rock on which he must have perished, could he 

 even have been produced, becomes the source of his 

 increase and of his happiness. And does not Man too 

 here aid himself? moved by that force which his folly 

 has thought an evil, but which He of all Wisdom has 

 appointed, to continue His own plans, and to add to 

 the happiness and numbers of His Creation. America, 

 New Holland, Siberia, will tell us what the earth was 

 without man, what it would have been without the 

 toils of man. What we cannot do, He, who knows 

 and does what is right, does for us : the rest He has 

 wisely left to ourselves ; and the result is the Earth 

 which we see, which our posterity will see a far other 

 Earth than it now is. 



It is true, it is an unfortunate truth, that man tends 

 to multiply beyond his means of existence : but let it not 

 be said that this has not been provided for, as it was 

 foreseen ; if, as of course, under that system which ever 

 leaves contingent evil attached to provisions for good : 

 while, in this case, as perhaps in all others, the very 

 occurrence of the evil is, like the wants of man, the 

 only stimulus by which he could have been induced to 

 carry on the great system of improving the earth in 

 that department appointed to him, and not appointed 

 beyond his powers. If the habitable and fertile earth 

 does not increase with the rapidity of man's increase, 

 still is it ever increasing, as it ever shall ; and thus is 

 provision made for the extension of his race. Can any 

 one believe that this also was not within His contem- 

 plation, that it is not a portion of a plan alike beneficent 

 and wise? 



