A QUESTION PROPOUNDED. 185 



earth, have been moving forward, marching on towards per- 

 fectability always. Is this forward movement finished ? We 

 have, in looking at the subject in the light of science, a time 

 when there was not on the earth, hi the air, or in the water, 

 any living thing. We have an era when animal life was 

 but a span removed from vegetable vitality ; we have an 

 era of gigantic vegetable growth ; an era of gigantic but 

 rude animal growth, and so on step by step down to the 

 advent of man. The previous combinations of animal life 

 and vegetable life passed away with the era in which they 

 flourished ; one class succeeding another, each emerging 

 from, and stepping over the annihilation of its predecessor, 

 till we come down to the present is there no future pro- 

 gress for this earth as a planet ? Is there to be no other 

 era, where man himself, like the sauruses, like the mastodon, 

 shall have passed away, to be succeeded by some nobler 

 animal structure, some loftier intelligence, some more cun- 

 ning invention of the infinite mind ? 



" Man, great in intellect, powerful in mind, gifted with 

 reason, and having within him a spirit that is immortal, 

 proud, glorious, aspiring as he is, falls very far short of per- 

 fection in every attribute of his nature. To say, therefore, 

 that the prescience, the creative power of the Almighty, 

 reached the limit of its achievements in the creation of man, 

 is to impeach the omnipotence of God himself. Will any 

 man insist that the ingenuity of the Almighty is exhausted ? 

 May it not be, then that the tune will come when some 

 sentient beings, as far superior to man, as man is to the 



