UNITY OF DESIGN. 447 



prehension. It is impossible, however, to conceive that 

 this enormous expenditure of power, this vast accumulation 

 of contrivances and of machinery, and this profusion of ex- 

 istence resulting from them, can thus, from age to age, be 

 prodigally lavished, without some ulterior end. Is Man, 

 the favoured creature of nature's bounty, " The paragon of 

 animals,'' whose spirit holds communion with celestial 

 powers, formed but to perish with the wreck of his bodily 

 frame? Are generations after generations of his race doomed 

 to follow in endless succession, rolling darkly down the 

 stream of time, and leaving no track in its pathless ocean? 

 Are the operations of Almighty power to end with the pre- 

 sent scene? May we not discern, in the spiritual constitu- 

 tion of man, the traces of higher powers, to which those he 

 now possesses are but preparatory; some embryo faculties 

 which raise us above this earthly habitation? Have we not 

 in the imagination, a power but little in harmony with the 

 fetters of our bodily organs; and bringing within our view 

 purer conditions of being, exempt from the illusions of 

 our senses and the infirmities of our nature, our elevation 

 to which will eventually prove that all these unsated desires 

 of knowledge, and all these ardent aspirations after moral 

 good, were not implanted in us in vain? 



Happily there has been vouchsafed to us, from a higher 

 source, a pure and heavenly light to guide our faltering 

 steps, and animate our fainting spirit, in this dark and 

 dreary search: revealing those truths which it imports us 

 most of all to know, giving to morality higher sanctions, 

 elevating our hopes and our affections to nobler objects 

 than belong to earth, and inspiring more exalted themes 

 of thanksgiving and of praise. 



