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Limmry* J 



DISCOURSE. 



A few facts, simple in ihemselves, but wonderful m 

 their connexion and results, make up the entire history 

 of man, and explain his relation to the planet he inha- 

 bits. The earth, itself, is but a vast tomb of buried 

 matter, man but the rudiment of a future. Both are 

 destined to a more perfect and usefid state. The 

 one to become the base of mighty physical changes, 

 the other the source of moral and intellectual re- 

 forms. If, on the one hand, all is destruction,, so, on 

 the other, all is re-production. Nothing lives or pe- 

 rishes without its purpose. No variation in nature oc- 

 curs in vain. If fires burst forth from the centre of our 

 globe, and heave, and twist, and break into frag- 

 ments, immense beds of rock ; if the fountains of the 

 great deep are broken up, and the winds rushing 

 from their prison house, overturn the barriers between 

 sea and land ; if empires are destroyed ; if whole races 

 of men become extinct, and the records of their sci- 

 ences crumble to dust ; — it is only that new seas and 

 new lands, new races of beings, and new civilization, 

 may rise in their places. All, from the land we stand 

 upon, to the most refined intelligence, is in a state of 

 progression. Each atom of existence forms a part of 

 that great system, which evolves the destiny of man, 

 and advances him nearer and nearer towards his God. 

 There may be discovered in many of the writers and 

 speakers of the day, a disposition to undervalue the 

 times in which we live. They condemn the present, as 

 degenerate, and mourn the future as beset with disas- 



