Kor] AND SYMBOLS. 233 



and indefatigable are they in their labours ; and how exultant 

 are they if they can save men from being made victims ! D. 



The Advent of Moral Ascendancy. 



Contemplate our planet as it must have been when in- 

 habited by the monstrous birds, and reptiles, and quadrupeds 

 which preceded the advent of man. Those were times when 

 animated forms attained dimensions which are now wholly 

 exceptionable. That may be described as the age when phy- 

 sical and physiological forces were dominant, as the force of 

 moral agency dominates over the present, and is destined, as 

 appearances tend to prove, to dominate more fully hereafter. 

 Can we not recognise an antagonism between the development 

 of brute force and of the quality of mind ? Would it not even 

 seem that Nature could not at one and the same time develop 

 mental and corporeal giants ? The physiological reign has only 

 declined in order to prepare the advent of moral ascendancy. 

 Giant bodies seem departing from the earth, and giant spirits 

 commencing to rule. Humanity is progressive : is not this 

 progression made manifest by zoological revelations ? The first 

 bone-traces of human beings range back to an epoch posterior 

 to the monstrous quadrupeds entombed in the diluvium. Here- 

 after giants probably will only be seen in the moral world, 

 grosser corporeal giant forms having become extinct. s. N. 



The Inextinguishableness of Moral Truths. 



Nothing can be more singular than the manner in which 

 plants spring up on certain occasions. Thus after the great fire 

 of London in 1666, a large portion of the devastated city was 

 in a short time covered with a luxuriant crop of the Sysymbrium 

 irio, in such profusion that it was calculated that the whole of 

 the rest of Europe did not contain so many specimens of this 

 plant. Again, wherever a salt-spring breaks out at a distance 

 from the sea, its vicinity immediately abounds with salt plants, 

 although none grew there before. When lakes are drained, a 

 new vegetation springs up. Thus when some of those of the 



