lieving that this search after truth is approaching its limit, or that there is any presumptuous audacity in tasking the loftiest powers of the mind to their utmost bent in the research. We believe, on the contrary, that in the long run, the intellect, and the moral and religious character of man, will be found to be all in perfect harmony; and that when the time is come when he can expatiate with ease, and with unconfined knowledge and certain science, over the yet dimly descried fields of mysterious information that lie before him, he will walk forth over the fair fields of creation, with a nobler consciousness of his heavenly origin and immortal nature, and prove himself a worthier, and more faithful servant, and humbler dependant upon that Supreme Creator, of whom he will then entertain worthier and higher conceptions. This prospect of man's destiny, as the intellectual Lord of this material world, points forward to a time, which it may indeed take many ages, with their varied revolutions, to bring to pass as a present reality. It is sufficient for our argument that such is the obvious tendency of the progress of the modern combined operations of the human intellect.

Now God does not communicate the truths of this material and terrestrial science, nor the truths of the science of mind by immediate revelation. It is enough that he has given man capacious faculties to comprehend something of the works of his hand, and placed him in circumstances to call forth these faculties into energetic and delighted exercise, and held out ample reward, both in the exercise itself, and in the sublime and wonderful results. We say then, that, if in that part of man's nature in which his moral constitution rendered it absolutely necessary, as we shall prove, that God should interpose to keep him from certain error, to instruct and to guide him, and to carry him onward to perfection-if there be found a striking and perfect analogy between this, and that natural advancement in discoverable knowledge, of which he is of himself capable, and if there be the same limitless ascending gradation for training and raising the mind in both-we think it a very strong evidence that the Author of nature, and the Father of the spirit of all flesh, is also the author of that revealed religion.

Of the particular details of the knowledge and intellect of the first ages of the world we have very scanty information But if we look back from the comparatively bright day of science in which we live, up the path of authentic history and probable tradition, we find that the universal voice of that

history proves that this light which guided man gradually becomes dimmer and feebler, till we arrive at the rude simplicity of barbarism, when almost the very elements of science and abstract speculation were unknown. All the arts of man were then the offspring of necessity, and his knowledge such only as was the natural result of the limited range of circumstances in which he moved. We can thus trace back from the age of cities and civil polity, to the time when men were scattered over the fields as rude and primitive agriculturists; from that, to the time when they were shepherds and hunters, living in tents, and migrating over the unappropriated surface of the earth. Beyond this we need not go; and so far the history or tradition of all nations carries us. We come to the very elements of society, when books, and means of fixing the experience and observation of one, for the benefit of all, were unknown. Of course, the proper means of a systematic education were altogether unattainable. Beyond this civil history and tradition fail to guide us in our backward search into the annals of the first ages. But passing beyond this into the gloom of vanished and unrecorded years, all tradition, and all analogy, lead us to the conclusion, that men were so from the beginning of the race. Such is the voice of tradition-such is the declaration of that volume of their history which it is our object to prove of divine authorship.

The question then is, How, and under what guidance, does the Bible represent man as learning knowledge when he came new from the hand of his Creator? With its direction we enter the sacred precincts of the garden of Eden, and find God conversing with man, as an indulgent father with his favoured child. And observe the peculiar nature of that method of instruction, which is noticed, as if of design. In matters where his natural sagacity was sufficient to direct him, he is left to the unaided exercise of that sagacity. The irrational creatures are brought before him, and he names them, and knows their properties and natures. This we know from the significant names most of the animals have in that language, which, we presume, was either the language of Paradise, or one of its close dialects. But in matters beyond the cognizance of his senses, he is under the immediate instruction of that gracious Being, who condescends to converse with him in a form upon which flesh and blood could look, and with which man could hold intelligible intercourse. Such is the distinct intimation of the sacred narrative. Without this direct revelation, I do not think there could have been any certain or conclusive process

of reasoning that could have led man to the knowledge of an invisible Creator of the material, and invisible Ruler of the moral world, from all the beauty and order of structure in visible nature. Much less do I think could he have, by any certain inference of a mental process, drawn the conclusion of his dependance upon him, and duty of obedience to him. How, then, was this taught him? By the visible means of a material symbol. He was forbid, under the sanction of a terrible threat, to eat of the fruit of a certain tree. This, we say, was the first direct intimation of man's duty of rendering obedience to God, and of his dependance upon God.

Nothing could be more explicit or obvious than this mode of communicating instruction. But it was a method which we have reason to say was adopted only because the knowledge of our first parents regarding the spiritual world was very limited, and their reasoning powers little expanded by exercise and experience. Simple and explicit as it was, however, embracing only a single step in the reasoning process, and that step most direct, their subtle foe found means to perplex and confound their reason, and seduce them from their obedience. This first trial of the reasoning principle and religious feeling seems to have been of no long duration; and however much all succeeding generations may think they have reason to wonder at it or regret it, neither that principle nor that feeling were sufficiently confirmed to be kept right by this very simple and ever present test.

Immediately upon this immense change of the moral condition of man, there is superinduced a much more extended and elevated, and striking system of religious education. That reason was now no longer a direct and undisturbed election of the right-those feelings were no longer an instinctive choice of what was holy and good. There was now frequently or habitually the troubled working of violent and perverted passions there were often the agonizing efforts of reason that knew and felt it had gone wrong, but in all its painful efforts could not again find or return to the path it had quitted. Observe, then, the next form of educational discipline under which man as a moral being is placed. There is still the primary doctrine of the creature's dependance upon the Creator, and obedience to him; but then the instruction is no longer communicated in the unmingled accents of paternal affection and unreproving familiarity. He comes in the attitude of a stern lawgiver and provoked judge, to pronounce sentence, to deal out threats, to promulgate a code of strict laws, and painful

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discipline, and penal labour. Hope is still left indeed, and the principle of faith is called into exercise as a new element of the altered state of man. But the promised deliverance, the object of that faith, is distant and obscure. Now, what we have to say of this system, elementary and simple as it is, and therefore directly adapted to the wants and condition of man, is, that his reason and previous knowledge of the character of God could never have elaborated it out of all the materiality of the new world around him. He saw that the face of universal nature around was changed toward him, as was also that of his Creator; and, withal, he must have felt an internal change in his own heart and mind corresponding to all the rest. But over and throughout these new arrangements he could read no omen of hope, he could draw no certain conclusion of escape or deliverance. Nature frowned upon him, and was no longer his delighted tributary, but reluctantly surrendered her treasures to the labour of his hands and the sweat of his brow. The field of her ample knowledge was spread before him, but he had to wring that knowledge out of all her regions, by patient and protracted study. And let us observe the very striking contrast between man as an intellectual and a religious being. No limit was placed to his acquisition of the knowledge of this earth's teaching; on the contrary, strong and necessarily increasing inducements to urge him to study the laws and operation of the material elements of nature, upon a knowledge of which his existence and comfort now depended. However erroneous his first tentative processes might be, experience was calculated at last always to lead him into the right path. Not so, however, in the spiritual and mysterious region of those religious principles which were to purify and restore him to the favour of God, and to his forfeited birthright. Here he had no elements upon which to work, but those which God placed immediately within the reach of his mind. And these were principles, be it observed, which, if he attempted to modify or accommodate to his wishes or fancy, he was sure to fall into error. For instance, the promise bore obscurely to the anxious faith of our progenitors, that Eve was to be "the mother of all life," as she had been to man the cause of all death-that her seed was to bruise the head of the serpent, and remove the terrible effects of his successful temptation. So much was revealed of a purpose of mercy on the part of God, conveying the certainty of some future deliverance for man. How, then, did their reasonings and anxious longing interpret it? It appears, not very obscurely, that they

anticipated the first of their sons as destined to accomplish the great work of their redemption, from the name they bestowed upon him. "Ihave gotten," said Eve, in the apparent exultation of her hope," I have gotten a man from the Lord," therefore she called him Cain. This interpretation may be called a gloss upon the text, still it is the most rational interpretation of the whole circumstance. If these were her hopes, how miserably was she mistaken, which our first parents seem to have felt when they gave the name of Abel, or vanity, to their second son?

Such, then, was the early condition of man in regard to his means of human knowledge-such were the simple principles of his religious instruction. He knew God as his creator, and lawgiver, and judge; he knew him as a being of holiness, who hated and punished sin, and was yet willing to be reconciled to the sinner, and had appointed the means and given the hopes of a future deliverance. In addition to this, it has been proved nearly to a certainty, that sacrifice was instituted from the time of the announcement of that hope, as a symbolical and standing representation of the transference of that guilt and its consequences upon the head of the doomed animal. Abel's sacrifice was accepted, because he did it in faith, and according to the appointed ritual. Unless we suppose, however, that the rite itself was of divine institution, we cannot imagine any principle of reason or religion that could have led man to it as a service that would avert the displeasure, and propitiate the favour of God. Reason must of itself have said, that shedding the blood and shortening the life of an innocent and happy animal would have been an aggravation of the sinfulness of the individual who killed and offered, rather than a propitiation of that being whose creatures he was destroying, whose works he was defacing by unmerited pain and death. Considered as an invention of man, sacrifice is absurd; but viewed as the institution of God, and a visible memorial and mysterious intimation of that great sacrifice which it prefigured, and by which alone it can have any intelligible meaning, it is in perfect consistence with that primary mode of instructing by external things and symbolic acts, which we see was adopted by the divine teacher of man as the only appropriate and effectual mode of teaching the truth.

These were the elements of the primeval creed; these were the simple rites of the worship of the first of men. We need not say that, had man's reason been tractable, and easily kept in the path which the giver of reason pointed out--had his de