emphatically mark to us the length of his plans, and that they are ever extending far into eternity, than our Saviour's assurance, that before our world was made, his future kingdom of felicity was resolved upon, to be the inheritance of those who should be deemed fitted to become its immortal inhabitants. No principle is asserted by the great teachers of Christianity more clearly, than the planning and providing foresight of the Almighty, in the grand systems which he has devised and introduced for the gradual melioration and ultimate perfection of mankind.t

Hence our just inference seems to be, that in every respect his creations have fulfilled both his purposes and expectations, however unsatisfactory some results may seem to us, who form our theories and anticipations with so much ignorance and mistake, though we do not wilfully mean them to be erroneous.

What is true as to all that exist, must be true as to mankind, who are such important parts of our earthly whole. We may therefore presume that human nature has thus far been fulfilling what he intended and expected from it, in all its component parts, and in the various ages that have elapsed since its creation, and up to this period of its duration; and that the human race are still going on to accomplish the farther and ulterior designs, for which they have been created. We see that they are not stationary. They never were so excited as at present; they never have before been so agitated. They are cherishing a passion for change, reform, and revolutionary experiments, by some of which they will

"Come! ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you, from the foundation of the world."-St. Matt. xxv. 34.

†Thus St. Paul mentions the Christian dispensation as having been ordained, before the world was formed, for our benefit; 1 Cor. ii. 7. He implies the same in Romans, xvi. 25; again to the Ephesians, he calls it "the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God," iii. 9. He tells his disciple Timothy, that it was given to us "before the world began," 1 Tim. i. 9. He represents the Christian race as chosen "before the foundation of the world," Eph. i. 4. He calls this improvement of human nature "an eternal purpose," ver. 11; so he assures Titus that it was what the Deity had "promised before the world began," Tit. i. 2. St. Peter, with the same fixed idea, declares that our Saviour's advent "verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world," 1 Pet. i. 20. No passages can more clearly show that the course of human nature, and the true sacred history of the world, is a gradual evolution of a divine plan, devised before our creaion, for the progressive improvement and ultimate benediction of mankind.

be benefited, and by others greatly injured, at least in the existing generations. But He who is ever watching the tumultuary impulses and movements, will make such of them as will be so serviceable, instrumental to promote his farther plans for the progression and improvement of our being. The rest he will cause to fail from their own impropriety and inutility. It is our own imperfection to form misconceptions of his designs, or of what we may think ought to be done by him. But our mistakes of judgment are a blot upon ourselves, and not upon him, whatever criticism we may, with fretful or forgetting temerity, direct against him. We may be sure that his plans are never unexecuted, and that the means which he employs never fall short of their appointed issue. And as soon as we can discern what they really have been, and can rightly appreciate them, we shall admire their wisdom, and as clearly perceive their successful termination.

Some of the points which have been fully attained, and which could not have been attained without a skilful provision and adaptation of the effective means, and with which the sacred history of the world is essentially connected, may be here adverted to.

One of these is the complete union of our soul and body in their present life; which is and ever has been an inexplicable wonder to all who have reflected on it. We are all sensible of the fact. We see that it takes place in a progressive growth of form, from our embryo state to our full maturity; yet no one can discern how it is effected, nor what maintains as well as establishes the connexion. The immaterial so perfectly associated with the material, so inseparable, till death disunites them! It is not merely a one living and sentient principle united with a most artificial body, compacted into limbs, organs, and trunk, from innumerable particles of great variety. It was also requisite that due means and provisions should be continually furnished and applied, to blend and to keep blended unceasingly these two dissimilar things into a single animated frame in every individual, so that the mental faculty should have a sensibility in all its external surface, and continual sensations from its eyes, ears, and fingers, and should have full power of using and directing its combined form, and every moveable member of it, as its varying will should choose.

It was also necessary to accomplish two other ends contrary to each other. One was, by due causations to keep the body and its principle of life associated together in close and perfect junction, and in full efficiency, so long as each individual was to remain on earth, but no longer; and the other was, when his term of duration ended, by other causes operating likewise within us, to sever the connexion in every one, so that the vital sensibility, although before so firmly combined with its corporeal abode, should then without difficulty quit it. Connected with these two contrasted events, two other as opposing purposes have been also in every one effectuated, though by means inscrutable by us. The one, that while the soul within the body the particles of this body shall never separate; or be replaced by others as fast as they do so; the second is, that as soon as the living principle leaves it, the particles shall no longer keep together nor be supplied, but shall instantly begin to disunite, and shall be decompounded into the minute matter or molecules which had been aggregated into it. Invariably, and unerringly, and universally, are all these curious results achieved.

Another law has been as fully operative. It was a part of the creative scheme that in the animated compound, before this severance should take place, there should be the power and means of causing beings like themselves to be formed, in order to be their successors, and to continue on earth their species of living forms. All these purposes have been accomplished at all periods. The provided means have been so wisely chosen and regulated, and so efficient, that millions of millions of other imbodied creatures, as well as of our own race, have been always existing and acting in this compound form-have each lived the period allotted to their class of being, and no longer-have always died within the term of their assigned durations, and have all possessed the devised reproducing power of continuing their species. No. where could means and ends be so precisely and successfully adapted to each other. The prescribed period of earthly life is never confined to one exact year or day. This is allowed to vary; but there is a peculiar boundary to each class which is never exceeded. Each live and die within these appointed limits. No horse can equal a man in longevity, and no human being since the deluge has reached to

200 years. The usual proportion of even a long life is within a third of this extent.

Another appointment of a great end and its successful production, with unabated energy, by means and by an agency incomprehensible by us, is, that all animals shall require sustenance from things external to themselves; and that material nature shall always provide a sufficiency of this nutriment.

When we consider the multiplicity and diversity of the living beings on our globe, and what an immense quantity of appropriate food such a totality in all their species is continually needing, and has been specially made to need; and yet that every one finds what it wants, the mind is astonished at the amount of foresight, power, benevolence, and skill, by which such a prodigious and adapted supply has been so fully and so steadily provided. As no animated frame can live without its proper proportion, the immense numbers which are always living attest the immensity of the provision, and that it is quite sufficient for them; for if it were not, they could not be.

Here is a purpose, of a magnitude which embraces all sentient existence on our globe, and has extended through all the time of its duration, which has ever been fulfilled, and still is daily accomplishing, with unceasing certainty and individuated effect. Yet how and why plants vegetate for this end, and with such dissimilarities, no one knows; we can only refer it to their Maker's will and continuing agency.

Another successful attainment of a vast end, still more surprising, because more difficult to be effectuated, appears in the design and law, that every human being shall have organs of sense in himself distinct from every other, and impressible in all by the outward things and movements of nature, affecting each separately; and yet these sensorial functions, though made in every one at different times, according to his bulk and growth, shall yet become so exactly alike in all, and likewise be so precisely reproduced in their several descendants, that the same external objects shall always produce in every one similar sensations. The substance which affects my eyesight as an ear of corn or as an oak-tree, makes the same impression on the millions of other human beings, before whose eyes these vegetables have appeared in all preceding ages, and who in every country are

at present beholding them. No plant seems to one a peartree and to another a rose. No one mistakes a sheep for a pig, or a field for a river. Here again the exactness and constancy of the individual effect, through all periods and in all classes, announce the precision and wisdom of the devised means, and their perfect operation. Every eye sees, and every ear hears, analogously to each other in their natural construction. A few rare anomalies occur from occa sional disease,* or as to colours from some accident to some part of the visual organ.† Peculiar states of the atmosphere cause the luminous fluid to act in an unusual manner on material things; but these only mark more strongly the wonderful production of the general effect. The proper action of every sense is so much alike in all, that we are perpetu

Mr. Abernethy mentions a patient under a palsy to whom "a candle, though held near him, appeared as large as the moon."-Surg. Obs. p. 116.

† Two brothers are now living, known to me, who see no difference between blue and green: nor between crimson, red, and scarlet-a pupil of Mr. Guillie had no sensation of the red colour, but having heard that the fire was red, when he had to translate from his Horace "rubenti dextra," called it a burning right hand.

Thus at Algiers, in June, 1830, at 10 A. M. when the sky was peculiarly clear, the state of the light and air doubled the images of objects to the eye. Two images were distinctly seen by the spectators who were observing the line of battle formed in front of the camp. The false image seemed of not more than half the brightness of the other; but was perfectly well defined. It appeared elevated above the objects them-selves by about a quarter of their actual height, and declined slightly to one side. Many of the Algerine tents had on their summit spheres of tin supporting a crescent. Over each of these spheres a second was perceived, in immediate contact with the first and so strong was the deception, that it required a very nice observation to discover that there were not actually two. This phenomenon was communicated to the Acad. des Sciences in 1831.

Captain Owen mentions, that on the coast of Africa, "in the evening of 6th April, the vessel Barracouta was seen about two miles to leeward. So distinctly was she seen, that many well-known faces could be observed on deck, looking towards our ship. It afterward appeared that at this very period, the Barracouta must have been above 300 miles from us."--Captain Owen's Narrative.

Similar to this was the effect to the Old Signal Man at the Mauritius. He announced the appearance of a ship with four masts. Three days afterward a ship actually arrived, having four masts. She must have been seen by him when upwards of 300 miles off.-Quarterly Review, v. 50, p. 134.

Dr. Stegman had patients four times, whose disease was, that they saw themselves double. They perceived another self exterior to themselves. Feruss, Bull. Un. 1829, p. 433.