41872. ] 389 [ Price: 
—and nothing to God, I ascribe all to Him ; yet regard matter as essential 
means to all life, and to the exhibition of all mind upon this earth. We 
see God’s good design in physical nature, and that design we must rever- 
ence, and learn to adore Him in the sublimity of his works. Without 
this material earth, and sun that lights and warms it, there would be none 
of the life that we behold—would not be human souls to people heaven. 
Climate, it is to be admitted, does make the Esquimau and the Negro 
what they are. Unfriendly to life and its happiest physical development, 
it is also unfriendly to intellectual, to moral, and religious culture ; and it 
also fails either in the productions needful for man’s uses and improve- 
ment, or produces animal and vegetable life so rankly as to over-master 
the unskilled native, until he shall be helped by the stronger and more in- 
ventive man of the temperate zone. But it follows not that the mind is 
the production of the surrounding physical causes, but only that these 
have not so well developed the instrument the minds must use ; and con- 
sequently the mind itself is not so fully developed. 
The mind it is that is ever conquering nature and moulding matter and 
ruling life. It reclaims the earth to culture, fells the forest, drains the 
morass, destroys wild beasts; mines the fuels and metals; makes and 
applies iron to its ten thousand uses ; constructs railroads and telegraphs; 
ereates the arts and sciences; educates mankind generally unto a higher 
civilization, and makes a large proportion almost what they should be ; 
that is to say, learned, temperate and wise, lovers of man and worshipers 
of God; and all are advanced in moral conduct, except the irreclaimably 
vicious. The task remaining before our humanity is to endeavor to cause 
the people to approximate the standard of perfection; and if, peradventure, 
we get a majority of such, the world will have made inestimable progress. 
And why should we not all strive for such consummation ? In every branch 
of business, men exert a wonderful amount of common sense and acute- 
ness of thought, and achieve admirable success. Half the like assiduity and 
culture directed upon their own minds would produce a transformation of 
character and increase of intelligence, that would excite their wonder and 
the admiration of the world. Mind only can do it, but mind can work the 
consummation; and that is the great hope of all thoughtful, good men. 
In all ages men have spoken of matter and mind; of the flesh and the 
spirit ; of body and soul, as things of contrasted nature, and as at strife, 
until one has attained the rule over the other; and if that rule be of the 
flesh or the sensual passions, it is a dominion of sure degradation and 
early destruction; but if it be of the truthful mind, then is it a dominion 
of peace and wisdom. Paul said: ‘‘I see another law in my members 
warring against the law of my mind ;’’ with the sin in those members his 
sense of duty was also at war: and to desist from fulfillment of the sense 
of duty, was to him intolerable woe. Mankind have always made such 
contrast, and adopted their lesson of discipline from the requisition of an 
exacting conscience, and by induction from surely observed facts. And 
when our friends are with us in life, what is it that so much engages our 
attachment and love and veneration for them? Not surely the body, ex- 
cept slightly by association, since it is the temple where higher excellence 
