II. myriads and millions of definite organizations and LETTER limited figures, sublime masses and beautiful forms, which constitute our world, no deduction seems more just and certain, than that we and all the external things around us, have been framed by a Creator of adequate mind and power, who has exerted his thought, and imagination, and will, to design what He resolved to form and to execute by His omnipotence, whatever He had thus planned and determined to produce. To such a Being our reason, from our experience as to its own operation in ourselves, ascribes also purposes and ends in all that He fabricates; because we, in our inferior mind, can make nothing without them. Our views will vary according to the state and qualities of our intellect. The more weak and foolish we are, the more what we do will be marked by these qualities; but we shall always have some intended object to effect, even in our greatest absurdities. Mind always means. It cannot act without meaning, and its meaning will correspond with its state and nature. On these grounds we may safely infer, that the Deity has had purposes and ends in view in all that He has made, and always will have such in whatever He does or regulates; and that these will always be congenial and consistent with the properties and perfections of His nature, and cannot be otherwise. Thus science, reasoning, and revelation, unite to assure us of this grand truth, which must be the basis of all the views and observations that will form our present correspondence, as it was of our former one. What is true of the whole universe is equally so of our separate globe; and in this, peculiarly so of our LETTER human race, as the most prominent of its contents. II. We may regard ourselves as His specific workmanship, previously designed, most skilfully composed, and ever since most carefully attended to. It is a self-degradation of our own choice, if we will suppose, against all probability, that we are but links of an eternal chain of sequences, without beginning or end, and devoid of a Creator; or that in such a destitution, and in contradiction to visible fact, we are but the casual accidents or capricious assemblages of promiscuously moving atoms from a Godless chaos. Our knowlege and our better feelings, which claim a source like themselves, should rescue us from these depreciating conjectures. We have had a more intellectual origination, and need not sink ourselves from it. The true opinion, therefore, as to that Human Nature which in its system, course, and operations, will be the subject of our succeeding contemplations, will be, that it has been a special design of the ETERNAL MIND, who, in such a period of His perpetual existence as He thought fit, was pleased to determine upon the fabrication of such a world as our earth exhibits itself to be-upon furnishing it with such living plants and animals as we lately reviewed and upon forming on it successive generations of such intellectual creatures as mankind, with such persons, qualities and powers as have always distinguished our race. He accomplished His noble purpose by our creation; and He has since. caused His same favoured creatures to undergo such variations and improvements, as human history and biography have delineated, and as are continuing daily to appear. These have been always occurring II. under his knowlege and continued existence, and LETTER therefore under His superintendence, and with His unceasing privity. From His own nature He must be as conscious of human affairs, as He is of any and every other world that He has framed. It is not likely that He, who has taken such minute pains in the creation of all that we are related to here, should be indifferent or disdainful to us. The nature of our world in all its compartments is a testimony, that we have fully shared His profoundest and kindest deliberations; and is a pledge, that what He has so curiously and so benevolently planned and framed, will never be unnoticed or uncared for by Him. It is on these principles that the Sacred History of Man is founded. They assure us that there must be a sacred history attached to his existence, and that his race has been always living under the development and conduct of it. It is a difficult subject for us to discover the Divine system which has been pursuing thro it; but not more difficult than that of material nature has been found to be. As already intimated, I do not presume to be able to accomplish more, than to place my foot upon the threshold of the sacred building which I admire, and to glance upon the awful interior and the grand avenues connected with it. Others will in time advance farther, and discern what I desire to explore, but am not competent sufficiently to elucidate. But I shall be satisfied if I can succeed in showing, that views like these will give to the history, and transactions, and fortunes of mankind, a meaning and a philosophy which they cannot possess on any other supposition, and by which they LETTER will become more useful and be more permanently interesting to us. II. But altho the cultivated mind of the present day, at least in our own enlightened country, and indeed very generally in others, where knowlege is pursued, tho, with some exceptions which we must lament, infers and maintains that our Earth and its system have been the creations of a reasoning and Omnipotent Deity; yet this truth could be known to be such by our primeval ancestors, only from a revelation and assurance of the fact by the Divine Architect, or on His authority. No human being witnessed the operation; nor could the first man, at his emerging into existence, ignorant of the very nature of being and power, and causation and effect, have then understood it, even if he had been framed before the other parts of his world, and had beheld these arising simultaneously, or successively around him. He would have only seen vast movements, as unintelligible as universal; mighty masses in conflicting agitations; figures starting up with endless diversity; and innumerable changes and phenomena of scenes and substances, that would have confused his eyesight and baffled his comprehension. He would have been terrified, rather than instructed, and have sought his shelter in the nearest cavity or penetrable forest, instead of contemplating, in order to comprehend, what would be too grand even for his vision to survey, and too alarming for him to have any wish to witness. The first idea of a creating Deity, and that the visible world was His production, must have originated in the human mind from His express communication. It is too sublime an impression to have been self-formed within us; altho as soon as it was suggested, many a heart has delighted to cherish it, as most congenial with its best feelings and intellect; and in proportion as mind has increased in knowlege, it has been active and eager to trace the marks and confirmations of it, in the fabric and beauties and beneficences of surrounding nature. Yet, tho millions have felt with the Hebrew sovereign, that "the heavens declare the glory of God," and that the starry hosts display the special operation of His forming power, the deduction is not likely to have been made without the revelation that conducts us to it. Many ages at least must have first elapsed, however easy it is now to reason on it, for want of that long and patient observation of natural things, which will alone give due knowlege of them; and of that practised discernment of their several relations and connected effects, which enable so many acute thinkers in our age to support the sublime conclusion with such philosophical certainty and such great precision. That the momentous communication was made to man of the divine origin of himself and of his abode, at the beginning of his existence, the Mosaic History narrates, and there is every reason to believe the declaration. No intelligent Creator would have concealed such a circumstance from the intellectual creature, by whom He wished to be known, and whose affection and obedience He condescended to desire. It is only surprising that the noble truth should have ever been depreciated or disregarded by any portion of mankind; and yet we find from history that it was so slighted or perverted in the most ancient times by many, that it became obsolete or forgotten by some nations; and LETTER II. |