LETTER XVIII. 



191 



years — to make it a fit habitation for him. And 

 changed yet once more, as we are told it will be, it 

 may hereafter be the seat of his final home. 



4* And what is man ? For the purpose I have in 

 view, it will be necessary to consider him in his very 

 highest and in his very lowest relations, — on the one 

 hand, as an organised being and in relation to this 

 earth and the living creatures that inhabit it along 

 with him, — and, on the other, as a spiritual being and 

 in relation to the Creator and to the place or rank 

 which he holds in the scale of being. 



5. Let us first of all consider him in his lowest re- 

 lations. In relation to this Earth which he inhabits, 

 man may properly be said to form a constituent part 

 of it. He is literally taken from its very dust — of 

 which indeed he is described as forming the highest 

 part,* and when he dies he is resolved back into this 

 dust again. So true is the quaint remark of Jeremy 

 Taylor : " Our very graves were once living ; we dig 

 through our forefathers, and must speedily become 

 earth ourselves to bury our posterity." As an or- 

 ganised being, he is constructed of the like materials, 

 fashioned after the same general pattern, and subject 

 to the same conditions of existence with the beasts 

 that perish, and even with the corn that sustains him 

 —in short, with the whole organised creation. And 

 in' his merely animal relations, he is altogether so 



* Prov. viii. 26. 



