312 MAN'S FUTUKE DESTINY. 



prerogative to rule; and which dooms another class to an 

 hereditary servitude, changeless as fate, and relentless as 

 the grave. It will vindicate the rights, and ennoble the 

 destiny of the masses of the people who work. 



" But where is this career of progress to end ? Is there a 

 limit to this onward movement ? We know that the world 

 has made greater advancement in the present century, than 

 it did in the five thousand years preceding it, and that new 

 discoveries in the sciences and the arts are being made 

 every day. Nature has been compelled, and is still being 

 compelled, to yield up secrets which have been for centuries 

 regarded as beyond the power of human capacity to pene- 

 trate. How is this ? Is the world to go on thus, always ? 

 Is this rush of progress to remain unchecked, always ? If 

 so, what mystery, even of Omnipotent wisdom, will remain 

 unsolved at last ? What results will not human energy be 

 able to accomplish ? Is the tune to come when man shall 

 be able to shape out of clay, fashion from wood, or stone, 

 an image of himself, and, breathing upon it, command it to 

 walk forth a thing of life, and be obeyed ? Will he be able 

 to search out a universal antidote to disease ? Will he dis- 

 cover the means of supplying the human frame with such 

 recuperative power as will nullify the law that prescribes to 

 all flesh the dilapidation and decay of age, of weakness and 

 of death ? Will he search out some secret agency which 

 will hold his body in perpetual youth, defying alike the 

 attritions of age, and the ravages of disease ? Will he dis- 

 cover how it is that time saps the strength, and steals away 



