ADDRESS. 



The Lord, who formed the earth, formed it to be inhabit- 

 ed. What were its original soil and climate, and what its 

 animal and vegetable productions, it may now be difficult to 

 .determine. Thus much we know, that the whole and every 

 part were such, that infinite wisdom and benevolence sur- 

 veyed them with delight, and pronounced them good. 



In such a world as this were our primeval incestors plac- 

 ed, and the employment assigned them was to till the ground 

 and eat of its fruits. Had our race continued innocent and 

 undefiled, agriculture must have been a pleasant recreation, 

 rather than a toil. We might then have seen those products 

 of the field, which now cost us much labor, growing sponta- 

 neously or with little care ; our trees not infested with the 

 canker work and the caterpillar, our wheat not choked by 

 tares, nor our pastures and meadows over-run with briars 

 and thistles. So harmless might have been the beasts and 

 reptiles, that the figurative language of prophecy would have 

 been hterally true, and we might have seen " the wolf dwell 

 with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid, the 

 calf and the young lion and the falling together." We might 

 have seen our children, not only safely sporting with the 

 lion, the leopard, and the wolf, but " playing on the hole of 

 the asp, and putting their hands on the den of the cockatrice, 

 and there be nothing to hurl or destroy in all the earth." 



