ical perfection, and disobedience and physical imperfection. (p. 299 and beyond.)

3. The mutual interaction of all forces, and the consequent liability to variations in all individualities. (p. 303.)

4. The connection of decay with all existence. (p. 321.) 5. The general system of life, as a system of individualities in which chemical forces, under a condition termed life, are employed to carry on growth through a course of concurrent production and decay; and a cycle of reproduction ever renewing youth and throwing off age. (p. 306.)

The plan of life, its flow and death, are so closely in harmony with the system of nature at large, that we can hardly doubt the universality of its general laws.

5. A common system of progress for all spheres, from an early condition of high temperature to a cooled, and, as far as temperature goes, habitable state-involving the existence of regions devastated by fire, of volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain-making, etc.

6. On all spheres in a habitable condition, zones of climate more or less diverse, and systems of currents in the ambient fluids, whether liquid or aerial, with all those concomitant effects over a globe that flow from the laws of the universal forces.

7. It is probable that, at least, the more common elements. are identical through the universe. The meteoric stones which come from space to the earth, favor this conclusion.

In the above mentioned principles, which we may safely regard as universal, have originated a large part of the alleged evil on our earth-geological upturnings and catastrophes, cold and heat, mountains, deserts, death.

The system of vegetable and animal life may or may not be similar on other spheres. As a oneness of law or system prevails through the universe for inorganic nature, it is reasonable to suppose a oneness for life, even beyond the general laws of life. The two kingdoms are so bound together in mutual interplay, that we have grounds for believing in their existence elsewhere, though with such modifications as the physical condition of particular spheres may require. If thus univer

sal, then abortion, defect, deformity, uncouth shapes, brutal passions, beastly and carnivorous appetites, pain, are incident to the universe at large. (pp. 306 to 316.)

If not universal, they come under our second division.

II. Anticipations involved in the special fundamental laws or conditions of Nature on the Earth.

1. The extremes of climate on the earth; the change of seasons; day and night. These are among those conditions, dependent primarily on the position and movement of the earth in space, and to which, therefore, all other conditions were to be adapted; to which perfect man might as well have been fitted by God as a fallen race.

2. The systems of animal and vegetable life, as above remarked.

Stopping here, we find involved in the ultimate laws of inorganic and organic nature, nearly all the alleged evil, even to deformity, beastliness, and pain.

It is possible that there are elements peculiar to the earth; but the probable unity of origin of our whole planetary system, and the composition of meteoric stones, do not favor the supposition.

III. Anticipations in the Special Arrangements of the Earth.

1. The land mostly in the northern hemisphere, and largely in the north temperate zone, anticipative of man's creation in this zone of the northern hemisphere, and his special adaptation to a temperate climate as that of his most perfect development.

2. In the age before man, in geological history, the highest quadruped races and most abundant animal population (in proportion to the area) were on the eastern hemisphere.

3. The continents separated by a narrow ocean, (the Atlantic,) with the high mountains on the remote oceanic borders, thus throwing all the plains and slopes into one wide basin, from the Rocky Mountains to the Urals and Mountains of India, as Professor Guyot well remarks, directing the water courses or natural highways to a common sea, anticipative of the means and area of progressive civilization.

4. The dividing up of Europe and the adjoining borders of Asia into small basins by numerous intersecting mountain ridges, and indenting the sea coast by deep bays, for the early development of man; and also the arrangement of North America with a single great interior plain, as one field of action, and with the largest coal and iron beds of the world, for his later progress; as if, Professor Guyot says, for harmonizing diversities and promoting social union. Also the spreading out of Africa mostly within the ungenial tropics, without harbors, with few rivers opening to the sea. Thus each continent has its individual character and purpose.

5. The elevation of mountains to snowy hights; the special disposition of the continents which determines the location of deserts, forest regions, etc.

6. The fitting up of the earth with ores, coal, healing herbs, and all that is useful in the mineral and organic kingdoms.

7. The creation of plants and vermin, that should add to man's toil and his troubles.

8. In the system of personified sentiments and passions presented among plants and animals, (pp. 314, 316,) some classes may possibly be special to nature on the earth.

These are a few of the arrangements that may be regarded as having had reference to the human race.

After this review, we are prepared to return to the inquiry, What are the anticipations of depraved man in nature?

Do they reach through every law and every event from the first command, "Let it be"? Is sin, then, not only incidental to nature under all circumstances, but inevitable? Or if not in purpose inevitable, was it foreseen as a certainty, and were therefore the universal laws of nature specially and specifically adapted to it, in all their wide range, for a retributive end? If nature in its inception had sin in the blossom, and if its very foundation scheme was ordered with reference to it, and in preference to some better scheme which might have been instituted had sin not been a certain prospective event, then sin would seem indeed to be in nature and nature a deformity.

If, on the contrary, God created the best possible system of nature, laid its fundamental laws in wisdom that was not fool

ishness in case the laws for man were obeyed, a system suited to disobedience while best fulfilling its end in obedience, involving the possibility of sin but not its certainty in every race, since free agents were to be free, then may reason say, nature is indeed an exalted work, for it rests upon a foundation of righteousness, and bears the image of God stamped upon man, its capstone. Nearly every alleged deformity has been shown to be involved in the laws of the forces of matter, or of the system of life; and even the law which places imperfection in nature, and which embraces in its line of effects man's degradation, is a consequence of the simple existence of law. The retributive anticipation, if in these provisions, reaches to the very bottom of all existence and even to every inhabited sphere. But we see no evidence that evil was thus comprehensive in its influence on the decisions of Infinite Beneficence. The existence of pain and evil will continue to puzzle the mind of man until it is perceived that through nature, from its first edict to the last, perfection and imperfection stand, like light and darkness, in direct counterpart, and that life and death, pleasure and pain, holiness and sin, have the same profound relation; man's free-agency alone raising him above inevitable law. The facts on both sides are met only by the view that the system was adapted equally to obedience and disobedience.

With such a basis of law, the special adaptations of a globe to its race were easily made in its outer arrangements and furniture. Here we reasonably look for those anticipations of the human race of a sphere that have direct reference to the character of that race. We have pointed out some of these characteristics of our own sphere, under the third head. (p. 340.)

But among these outer appointments, there are many that would have been required for holy as well as unholy man, so that we have not met the whole question by referring the anticipations of sin to the third group. In order to study out the true end of such arrangements, it is necessary to keep in mind man's commission. Perfect or imperfect, he was to work out his own elevation by bringing nature into his service. The command, "subdue and have dominion," preceded the fall. Created without knowledge, and placed in an untried

world, the command was, in fact, in his being; and the obstacles to obeying it, arising from the difficulty of searching out truth and overcoming irregularities of climate, seasons, soil, and whatever might be noxious, were calculated to excite his energy and prompt to effort. It is also necessary, before pronouncing on any particular obstacle, to examine into its uses. The excessive extremes of the earth's climates, how shall we decide whether they are not essential to the best development of the perfect man? Alpine mountains may seem to be an undoubted mark of the curse. Yet they are a storehouse of waters, and thereby of fertility, for continents; India, China, the Americas and other lands owe a vast debt to their snowy hights, for they redeem great territories from barrenness. Such a fact as this naturally makes us slow in pointing the finger at any one spot as stamped with the curse more than another, or as being so far retributive in aim that its highest purpose would not have been accomplished if man had not sinned. Another seeming mark of sin is the barrenness of many regions, owing to the drift stones and gravel that cover them. Yet the process which sent this drift material over the continents was but the prelude to that which filled the valleys with their alluvial plains. The exhibition, also, of a complete system of sentiments and passions in forms in nature, (see p. 331, § 8,) responds, as has been shown, to a necessity in the perfect as well as imperfect man. These forms are a deep fund of imagery to language, poetry and art-a display of mental and moral ideas in symbols-a manifestation through nature of Infinite Mind in sympathy with the finite.

But while doubting over particular facts, we still have to admit that in the general arrangement of the earth's surfacethe subdivisions and form of the land-barren and fertile fields-its noxious productions, whether plant or animal, man, in his present state, was distinctively in view; and that these orderings were intended in part to guide him in his mental, social and political development, and in part to deepen the necessity of labor for a being whose evil propensities would disincline him to serious effort. But even in these marks of the fall, there is little that mars the external beauty of nature. There