the next bound, passes from the midst of winter into a sea at summer-heat. Now the ice disappears from her apparel; the sailor bathes his stiffened limbs in tepid waters; feeling himself invigorated and refreshed with the genial warmth about him, he realizes, out there at sea, the fable of Antæus and his mother earth. He rises up and attempts to make his port again, and is again as rudely met and beaten back from the northward; but each time that he is driven off from the contest, he comes forth from this stream, like the ancient son of Neptune, stronger and stronger, until, after many days, his freshened strength prevails, and he at last triumphs and enters his haven in safety; though in this contest he sometimes falls to rise no more, for it is often terrible. Many ships annually founder in these gales.”*

It is the same wherever man and the inanimate creation come in contact. Nature bears, it is true, the horn of plenty in the one hand, but she carries in the other the rod of discipline. The coal mine yields up its inexhaustible stores, but below issues a gas ready to poison or explode, and above beetles the earth, ready to fall in and bury. Mr. Huskisson is torn to pieces on a railway, which his clear head and resolute purpose led him to be foremost to appreciate and carry through; the great gun of the Princeton, exhibited as one of the first products of mechanical art, bursts and destroys the chief of the very department under whose auspices the exhibition was made. Iron, proclaimed by the late Francis Horner to be the chief engine of modern civilization, is the great agency which pro

Maury's Geog. of the Seas.

duces by far the greater proportion of violent deaths. Even climate, while it marches forward, sowing the seeds of life, carries also a scythe by which, in the moist winds of spring, the sultry heats of summer, the bitter storms of winter, multitudes are swept into their graves.

§ 95. The inquiry then comes, is there anything in the character of man, the only agent existing on the face of the earth as the subject of moral discipline, which can explain phenomena such as have been noticed? Let it be remembered that the analogies of science lead us to this very kind of inquiry. If the comparative anatomist, for instance, discovers an anomalous bone, he does not declare that here is an evidence of imperfection or caprice on the part of the Creator, but he looks to the properties of the specimen, and judges of the remainder of the animal by the peculiarities he thus observes. "This," he decides, "is the part of an animal that is granivorous; that of one that is carnivorous." So it is with respect to the physical properties which certain atmospheres engender. We look at Jupiter, and, as we observe the tremendous pressure of the gravitation which bears upon his bottomless seas and his light soil, we conclude that, if he be populated at all, it must be by animals light of weight and strong of muscle. turn to Saturn, and when we observe that his density is scarcely above that of cork, and that the amount of light and heat that reaches him is only a nineteenth of that of the earth, we conclude that his inhabitants, if possessed of the same type of organization as our own, must have the senses manifold more acute, and the sensibilities to the same degree more obtuse. We turn to Mars, and, as we find that

We

the gravity at his surface is only half of that with us, we make allowance for a double bulk on the part of those who dwell amid the sparkling snows which astronomers have been able to detect at his poles, or under the sultry clouds that float around his equator. In other words, instead of judging of the Creator from a section of the thing created, as some of those who have drawn these very conclusions would ask us to do, we judge of the thing created from such properties placed about it by the Creator as we are able to accept as a basis of examination.

§ 96. Let us suppose that an inhabitant of one of these planets, after witnessing the scarred and corrugated moral atmosphere of our own globe; after seeing only fissures of sunlight through lowering banks of clouds; after seeing how crushingly grief or oppression gravitates the heart downward in one place, and how genially home and social influences unite in another to cheer and elevate it, and yet how certainly these influences are, sooner or later, destroyed ; what would an intelligent observer be likely to conclude with regard to the moral character of those to whom this atmosphere was adjusted? Would not such an observer, after witnessing these phenomena, and noticing the marks of Divine wisdom and love rising superior to the whole, conclude that man is in a state of exile from God, continued on his part voluntarily, and accompanied by severe penaltiesthat home is meant to teach, and not to worship—and that all the mechanism of Nature is so adapted as to instruct and discipline, but, at the same time, to prepare for another life?

§ 97. b. The human heart, so far from maintaining a

communion with God, is inclined more and more to place its affections on things earthly.

Why else is it that life is made so short? Why is it that while there may be special "runs of luck," as they are called, the longest and most fortunate of lives meets, sooner or later, with its heavy cross, or, if that cross come not, goes at last naked out of that world where its attire was so splendid,―goes from the home of luxury to the cold and loathsome grave? How can we account for the inadhesiveness, as it were, of all earthly good,-for that quality which apparently intervenes to loosen and break off the attachments of man to whatever those attachments cling? Does not this discipline of affliction, of disappointment, of casualty, of wind and storm, of earthquake and blight, of disease and pestilence,-does not this discipline, viewed from the stand-point thus taken, demonstrate a settled tendency toward the idolatry of human wealth and comfort on the part of those to whose moral standard this system is adapted? We visit a lunatic asylum, or a prison, and judge of the character of the inmates from the character of the restraints placed on them. "This man," we say, if we start with proof aliunde of the benevolence and wisdom of the government of the institution, "has a temper violent and ungovernable; this is gentle but melancholy. Restraints we find in one place; encouragements in another." May we not say the same, when we view the system of mingled encouragements and restraints with which the world abounds?

§ 98. c2. There is a future retribution which demands that the free agency of those subject to it should remain

unimpaired, while there are such general influences about it as will promote patience, submission, and earnest endeavor.

It would have been practicable to have created a groove out of which human purpose could not run. We can suppose such an observer as we have described, could he see a compulsory mechanism which would exact a specific course and no other, declare, "Here are no moral agents; these are automata who are as much the creatures of positive control as are the stars in their orbits." But when he observes the moral atmosphere around man, his opinion would greatly change. Here," he would say, "is an agency, not to com

Here comes the

Here

pel, but to invite patience and energy. spring, with its slow vegetation, interrupted by occasional frosts and storms, but at the same time showing how industry and endurance will bring forth the tardy crop. comes the storm at sea, admonishing man how incompetent are science and skill to secure an always favorable voyage. Here are varied elements, such as climate and soil, combining to preserve individuality, to excite energy, to counsel submission." Under so artificially constructed a system of influences such as these, not powers, there must dwell a moral agent, and one whose destiny corresponds in its grandeur to the splendid apparatus of which this system consists.

§ 99. d2. These disciplinary influences, however, are insufficient without the special Divine aid.

Let such an observer, for instance, view such a storm as that which destroyed the San Francisco. Let him notice the sublime and awful spectacle produced by the crash of thunder, the fierce swell of the billows, the vio