and places them according to their natural qualities, that they perform exactly the operations and results which he intends and proposes them for, and no other; material fabrics can, therefore, be made with unerring precision, and for an abiding permanence. Our Gothic cathedrals are instances of the length of duration for which we can construct edifices, and of every part steadily performing its designed and foreseen office.

But if a spontaneous will and free agency were to be introduced into the different members of these structures, all would begin to break up and separate, and each portion to diverge according to its own properties and fancies. All these, acting as they should choose as long as the self-willing powers continued, no person could foresee where each would move to or what it would effect. Hence all creations of beings with a spontaneous volition, could not but be an experiment how they would use it, and what, under their capacities of action, they would do with it. The omniscient Maker unquestionably anticipated such an effect, and foreknew that it would take place, as he also foresaw that with such qualities his human beings would act in opposition to his declared will. He perceived that it would require a train of moral discipline and moral education to lead such beings into the knowledge, disposition, resolution, and habit of using their spontaneous will exactly, and at all times as they ought; and he created them on this principle. He foresaw that this result could be accomplished at all times in some degree, and more and more largely in the succeeding generations than in the earlier; because increase of the knowledge of what ought to be done, and continuing experience and conviction of the evil of omitting the right conduct, and of the benefit and comfort which self-restraint, for the sake of rectitude, would always produce, together with the augmentation of the practice and habit of thus acting, must improve the moral will and power in man as time went on, and as human transactions became more multifarious and more disciplining, and as the reasoning mind became more cultivated. But as it is manifest to us, we may assume that his omniscience equally perceived that perfect rectitude of conduct in all would require, in every individual, perfection of knowledge and perfection of judgment, as well as a constant rightness of will and desire, so that on every occasion of all sorts

that might occur, each might act invariably always as he ought. But the very statement of such a result exhibits the difficulty of producing it, and the great lapse of time whick must ensue before it could be realized in so many millions of human beings as now constitute the human race. It was at their outset, as it now is, certain, that human beings of this completed nature could only be the ulterior and consummated production of many ages of augmenting knowledge, of continually enlarging experience, and of exercised habit, so spacious and ample as to be co-extensive with the demands and incidents of a continued state of being.

We can judge of the time required, if we survey and consider our present acquisitions and condition. It was remarked in a note to our first chapter, that it has taken 5000 years to bring our astronomical knowledge to its present height; but this is nothing peculiar to astronomy. The same time has been required and taken to enlarge every one of our sciences to improve every one of the human arts-to advance every one of our manufactures, to their present admirable magnitude and eminence. It has, therefore, taken all the time which has flowed on from our creation to the present moment, to expand, and elevate, and enrich, and improve the human mind, both generally and individually, to the wonderful powers, attainments, and productibilities which now distinguish it. We can see this strikingly in our mechanical and intellectual operations. It is not so patent to our senses and perception in our moral nature, constitution, and practice. But we may be sure that the same remark is true as to these. There never was such a period of moral mind, such beauties and activities, such abundance of good actions, right feelings, and moral thoughts and wishes, as now are in the world; plenty of individual vices and errors also, I grant. But even the sinning individual has more good about him, and in his conduct, than the same state and amount of transgression united with it, at any earlier period. I am, therefore, satisfied that the moral and religious mind and nature of man have, thus far, as much improved as his scientific and intellectual capacities have avowedly advanced.

Thus, then, the process has so far worked successfully. It has quietly but steadily effected its assigned operations, and it is still going on, and, I believe, with victorious efficiency. There are few now living but must feel in themselves the

improvement of their moral selves, and therefore of their moral nature, since they became conscious of what was right and what was wrong. The mind must be debilitated or un hinged in any one, before it can desire to be deteriorated, of to become inferior to itself. We all wish and seek to be thought to be what we ought to be, and not to be deemer deficient, or unworthy, or inferior. We love to stand high in each other's opinion, and to do so we must strive to be what will bring the approbation to us, and therefore to aim and rise to what is deemed the best in our living day. Hence, as society improves, every individual must improve, more or less, with it; and thus the appointed process is continually working to urge every new generation to a greater, and wider, and ampler moral excellence, than the level of its predecessors.

Human existence has thus been a vast process of moral and intellectual formation, steadily evolving at every stage its appointed result, and always enlarging the progression, either in numbers or degrees, and most usually in both respects. The grand ultimate result, the successive advances, the ever-multiplying produce, and the means to effect it, and to surmount and avert the impending counteractions, which the contrarieties of millions of opposing wills would be always presenting, would be at the commencement, and always afterward, in the contemplation of the Almighty Director. He planned and provided, and has been supplying, supporting, and assisting, every agency that such a process and such a result would need. But adequate time was as essential as the adequate means; because gradual progression and acquisition could alone bring together, into the human spirit, the innumerable materials of which such perfection must consist. We are not aware of the myriads of right perceptions, ideas, thoughts, wishes, imaginations, reasoning, volitions, and judgments, which actually form at the present moment a right-minded and rightly-acting individual of the present amount of attained human excellence. But all these had to be brought separately into existence, in some individual or other, in different, ages and nations, Defore they could be imbibed and collected into the individaal mind of each who now has accumulated and possesses them.

Hence a perfect moral being can only be the last result
VOL. II.-U

of a very long series of such attainments, discoveries, feeiings, thoughts, actions, and habits, as at length compose a production so noble. Much evil and much good must be suffered and done, not by one only, but by all, and therefore by each, before any one, and still more before large multitudes can be of this character. The essence and principle of an acquired moral nature is, that the mind should itself become its own spontaneous right director. It must no longer need tuition to be so, nor even the self-coercion. Moral perfection will always consist in the soul itself having been so fully trained and exercised in every rectitude of thought and feeling, will and habit, that its actual nature has become that which can only so think and feel, will and act. We are all in a school of exercise for acquiring this inclination and transformation of our nature. Few of us like the training or the duty, but we are all under the discipline, whether we wish it or not, and we are all attaining considerable improvement from it.

LETTER XV.

A few observations on the Causes and Objects of the General Deluge, and on the state of our Historical Information concerning it.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

I HAVE now to call your attention to that great event from which our present natural and social worlds have more immediately proceeded.

The anterior state of both was so different from what followed the awful revolution which terminated their previous condition, that the new order of things had many of the effects of a new creation. It established that system of life and course of nature under which the human race have ever since been subsisting. It is from the deluge that we may date the more direct commencement of the present state and mode of existence, and laws of human life and society; and therefore it deserves some consideration of its cause, objects, effects, and evidences.

It is a waste of ingenuity or labour to seek to account for it by natural causes; partial inundations may arise from local circumstances, and partial operations of ordinary agencies; but no existing laws could produce a universal destruction, because the regular course of nature is to continue as it is, and not to subvert itself. It is made to subsist, and to be what we find it to be; and it looks like a contradiction which approaches an impossibility, that established laws and agencies can at the same time be both preserving and destroying. We may likewise say, that if natural laws could then have produced a universal deluge, they would have since repeated the operation with reiterations like the cometary visitations: but the history of all nations attests, that since the existing records of human transactions began, no second general deluge has ever taken place. We therefore run no risk of error in referring this stupendous incident to a supernatural cause, and that can only have been the will, and appointment, and exerted power of that Being, who alone can create and destroy; who would never suffer any agents to abolish what he meant to continue; by whose omnipotence either event is equally producible, but who never causes any thing to perish without adequate reasons, and for beneficial results.

Intelligence like that which has formed the universe amid which we are existing, employs its boundless power with as much wisdom and goodness when it alters, as when it constructs. We may therefore be certain that it effected this great revolution in its human world as an improvement in its condition; as an advancing stage of its grand process; for the benefit of those who were afterward to inhabit it; and as an assistant to the progression of human nature at large. As death, without any assignment of a fixed mode or time of dying, was made the law to all human life; the removal of the existing population by an overwhelming flood, was no other alteration of the previous course of things, than the causing all those to die at the same time, and at that particular time, who would have inevitably departed at some subsequent, though varying periods. It brought no more death into the world than had been before attached to it. It only caused the individual termination to occur earlier to the existing race than would have happened without it. The Deity did not choose that the future generations of his human creatures should be the offspring of those who had become