place; but such are either not human, or, if human, far away beyond the cloudy limits of earth.

Were the tendencies of our spiritual nature coincident with the holiness of the Divine Being, all external nature and providence would be coincident with us. Not a change would take place in the wide sphere of our existence, but in accordance with the disposition of our souls. We should love every intelligent being that approached us, and so perfectly correspond with our Maker as to worship him in all our knowledge, and find him alone the All-in-all of every sinless creature. But we are moral beings, derived from a corrupt stock, and born into this world without knowledge; it is therefore necessary for us to endure inconvenience, and, it may be, even agony, that our intellectual development may advance in connection and in sympathy with others, under the influence both of evil and of good, that thus we may become acquainted by experience with opposite and contrary affections, and individually know that holy thoughts dwell with joy and light, while perverse desire seeks to hide its misery and hideousness in the darkness which it loves. Hence, then, we discern why the body should be constituted as the medium of both painful and pleasurable impressions. Our souls require the stimulus of necessity, that the will itself may be free. Good and evil must be unalterably fixed before us, and felt by us, so to instruct us that we may choose between them; not, indeed, according to immediate sensation, but according to laws and principles founded on the will of Omniscience and Almightiness. The good pleasure of God, the benevolence of our Maker, revealed in our own understandings, is the only source of moral decision; therefore, the heroism of reason is submissiveness. Were it not that our souls are to learn dependence on spiritual power, and that our wills are to be subdued and subjected in joyous obedience to the

All-wise, our bodies might have vegetated like plants, rooted in the soil, nourished without care, and blooming in the sunshine or blighted in the storm, without the means of changing their place or improving their condition. But our volitions are excited by the states or the body. The Supreme appoints us a place in this dim world, that we may learn, that as the inconceivably diminutive atoms of which our bodies are composed are arranged by his hand for our convenience, so any one of them may, in obedience to his will, cause us to suffer and to die: therefore we are taught, alike by the minute and the magnificent, that He who brought us into existence for his own good pleasure, can alone sustain us and satisfy our spirits with the joys of life. In Him, therefore, let us trust without wavering; for he can not have conferred consciousness and reason upon us but for the purpose of enabling us to understand that his will is our happiness, and that in adoration we may approach him, thus to fill our being for eternity at the Source of power, life, love, and truth.

All the intellectual faculties depend on attention and memory, and these on the state of the organization. Our ability to compare, and therefore to judge, concerning objects of sense, must, of course, be influenced by the fitness of the senses and their connections, to enable the soul to attend to impressions. This fitness is not only due to the mechanism of the organs of external sense, but also to the condition of the blood and the nervous power. We shall, therefore, now proceed to point out certain facts concerning these peculiarities of vital action, from which the reader may draw practical conclusions for himself.

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CHAPTER I.

THE BLOOD.

OUR bodies are formed by the addition of materials received from without, which, being admitted into the blood, are distributed with it to every part of the system. In reflecting on this fact, the next thought presents itself in the form of a question. How are the blood, and the vessels through which it circulates, first produced? We can only reply, that the vitalized fluid, in which dwelt the organizing principle, in a suitable nidus, and under favorable circumstances, attracted materials to itself, and thus evolved the physical framework of the human being. It was derived from the parent's blood, but the primal source of each individual must have been from God in the direct creation of a parent stock. Hence, "each sire begets his character and kind," and no creature produces one of another species. The process by which blood is formed from other fluid under the influence of life, may be watched in the beautiful mystery of incubation.

If we would trace up the formation of the body to its first perceptible rudiments, we shall discover that there is something invisible and immaterial, that is not acting within the known laws of matter; something at work in the living fluid, tending to form a new body, and of course existing before that which it forms.

This something centers in a point, and, as the earliest evidence of its power, produces a microscopic vesicle, or cell, which, under the formative influence, goes on to

enlarge into a perfect egg, through every part of which the same principle exists at the same time, and causes the evolution of a specific order of organs, that ultimately harmonize and unite together, and administer to the consciousness and will of one sentient being. We see that the process of vital organization is not that of development, properly speaking, but of formation by an indwelling energy, which operates in every atom of the egg at once; at the same time and to the same end, the completion of a single body consisting of many reciprocal parts. At any moment it may die; a sudden or considerable change in its electrical state destroys the integrity it holds under the unbroken influence of life, and the power, which, under favorable conditions, would have matured it, now leaves the abortive materials to decay. The reader who is ignorant of this subject, should consult some modern work on physiology. But, by the closest study concerning it, what do we discover? Not an actual creation, it may be, but, as when the might of God" sat brooding on the vast abyss, and made it pregnant," a spirit of power is here amid the elements of another magnificent, and yet minute cosmos, subduing them to its own purpose, through them, in the order and consistency of a beautiful series of organisms, to reveal itself to other spirits, and to rest in blessedness amid the excellent world it had made its own.

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The first visible germ of the human body is an opaque spot of an inch in diameter, within the germinal vesicle or egg, which is of an inch in diameter. This germ is the commencement of the whole body. Several corpuscles of the mother's blood are acted on at the same time, and caused to arrange themselves, or their elements, so as to form a new being. There is something in this germ which attracts to itself the materials of which all parts of the mature animal is formed. The germ, then, must contain the power which causes growth,

the force which ultimately constitutes the power of the whole body. The development of form is but the manifestation of an inherent power, which, under favorable circumstances, produced by the same might, works out the idea of God in the plan of each creature. Thus the human germ can not be developed into any thing but a human body. It is the microscopic concentration of forces, which, under suitable conditions provided by the creative Mind, becomes the full-grown being. In its first beginning, it is but as an atom of dust moved by the breath of God; in the end, the residence of a distinct spirit, capable of enjoying the attributes of the Infinite. These are facts, not opinions.

But we must not confound the blind law, by which atoms take their place to form organisms, a law which is probably chemical, with the operation of a power consciously at work. Yet chemical action is never accidental or fortuitous, it is always acting to an end; but we must distinguish the forces employed in developing a body for the accommodation of a soul, from the soul itself. In the body, many forces are at work together, under a common law, but the conscious being is not manifested in it till the end of that law is in some measure fulfilled; for the purpose is, to prepare a body for the use of a conscious being. But the soul resides in it without interfering with the creative and formative forces, and is not conscious of their existence until it finds that they have been ordered to their offices, and have built up an abode which it may enjoy, without knowing how it was formed, or by what means it continues subservient to its will and pleasure.

We see, then, that life is transmitted from the living blood of the parent to an ovum formed from it, and that, being thus endowed with a derived vitality, the ovum itself, under favorable conditions of warmth, moisture, and supply of oxygen, has the power of being gradually