184 THE ADVENT OF MAN. 



rounding the earth, became more and more fitted for the 

 higher and more complicated animal organizations. At last 

 when time was ripe for his advent, when the earth was fitted 

 for his residence, and the air for his breathing, MAN, the last 

 and most perfect in his structure, the most delicate and 

 finished in his organization of all living things, made his 

 appearance. He stepped from the hand of God, the only 

 thinking, reflecting, the only intellectual, responsible being, 

 in all the world. He stood at the head of created matter, 

 with all things on the earth subject to his will, and corres- 

 ponding to his condition, his attributes, his necessities, and 

 his instincts. 



" Thus this great earth itself, has been but one continued 

 illustration of the great theory and principle of progress. 

 From a beginning, lost in the thick darkness of a past 

 eternity, it has been marching forward in a career as pause- 

 less as the sun in his journeyings through the sky, as clearly 

 demonstrable as the growth of the germ that starts from the 

 buried acorn, and moves on to its full development in the 

 great oak. Science records with unerring certainty the pro- 

 gress of the earth, and of animal life, from the lowest exis- 

 tences in the mollusca and polypi, up to the superlatively 

 complicated, and deh'cate structure of man, tracing it step 

 by step, until it is finished in the noblest work of God, a 

 human body coupled with an immortal soul ! 



" And here arises a question which science has not solved, 

 and to which the philosophy, the wisdom, the logic of the 

 past can give no answer. The earth, and the things of the 



