This sentiment is increased when we attend to the operations of Providence in the animal creation, and remember that things without feeling are only made and preserved for the use of those which possess this quality. We are now introduced to a system, not only full of wonder and beauty, but overflowing with love. The Eternal Parent every where appears diffusing life and enjoyment. Every blade of the field, every leaf of the forest, every drop of water in the mighty ocean is instinct with sentient beings; and wherever there is sensation there is happiness, or a tendency towards it. If from microscopic animals we ascend the scale, and look through the various departments of the living creation, the same principle is there universally operating under interminable modifications. Myriads on myriads of animated existences breathe, and act, and enjoy, and all of them display the tender care of an ever wise, ever watchful, ever bountiful Providence. The various instincts of the tenants of the water, the earth, and the air; their adaptation to their divers and sometimes opposite circumstances; the admirable contrivances by which the external world is suited to their subsistence, their accommodation, the exercise of their bodily organs, and of their faculties of enjoyment,-all these are beheld with peculiar delight, when, in them, we not only recognize an Intelligent Creator, but a never failing, unperplexed, unwearying Preserver, Governor, and Benefactor,-to sum up all in one word, a Parent God.

But if it be pleasing and edifying to view the lower creation in this light, what shall we say when we turn to Him who is the only image of Divine intelligence in this sublunary sphere. The same Being who governs the physical, governs also the moral world. He who imparted to the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field, feelings, propensities, desires, and affections, has imparted the same to man, but for a far nobler purpose. He has bestowed on him the principle of reason, to modify, regulate, and guide these faculties; he has gifted

him with an immortal soul, to be trained in the school of His providence for the world of spirits. How sublime and ennobling the occupation, to learn his will by investigating his works, and to mark his perfections employed in opening and exercising, in enlarging and strengthening, the mental powers of his intelligent but wayward

creature.

“See only,” says Lord Brougham, “ in what contemplations the wisest of men end their most sublime inquiries. Mark where it is that a Newton finally reposes after piercing the thickest veil that envelopes nature, grasping and arresting in their course the most subtle of her elements, and the swiftest; traversing the regions of boundless space; exploring worlds beyond the solar ray; giving out the law which binds the universe in eternal order. He rests, as by an inevitable necessity, upon the contemplation of the great First Cause, and holds it his highest glory to have made the evidence of His existence, and the dispensations of His power and of His wisdom better understood by men." "% "What delight,” adds this eloquent author in another place, “can be more elevating, more truly worthy of a rational creature's enjoyment, than to feel, wherever we tread the paths of scientific inquiry, new evidence springing up around our footsteps,-new traces of divine intelligence and power meeting our eye! We are never alone; at least, like the old Roman, we are never less alone than in our solitude. We walk with the Deity: We commune with the great First Cause, who sustains every instant what the word of his power made.”†

But there is an employment unspeakably more sublime and ennobling still. What we read but darkly in the book of nature, is traced as with a sunbeam in the book of revelation. There the Eternal displays his character in all its majesty and beauty,—in all its terrors and in all its grace. How astonishing is the light which

* Brougham's Discourse on Natural Theology, p. 194. † Ibid, p. 196.

the Gospel of Christ throws at once on the Divine perfections, and on the past history and the future fate of man! Let us wonder and adore :-Let us tremble and repent:-Let us love and obey!

THIRTEENTH WEEK-WEDNESDAY.

GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT.-CONTRAST BETWEEN SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS.

THE history of the arts is in truth the history of a particular department in the operations of Divine Providence. The progress of society, which we have been considering, is the result of that peculiar discipline which the Creator, by means of the general and particular laws he has impressed on nature, exercises over the human race; and, before bringing these volumes to a close, it seems desirable to revert to the ground we have passed, that we may, at a single glance, take a survey of this wonderful and complicated scheme.

To do this advantageously, we must look at man himself, and trace the progress he has made. We can best accomplish this in the manner already adopted, not by following his actual history, but by contrasting man with man, as we see him existing in various situations, and under different circumstances. We may safely take for granted that the original features of the human mind are essentially the same. If any tribe, therefore, is found to be materially different from another, it must be owing to the peculiar training which each undergoes,-to the impressions which have been made on their minds by culture, and by the pressure of circumstances and events. Take an infant of one of the savage tribes of Australia or North America, and separating him from his people, educate him in the arts and

sciences of civilized life, and who will venture to say that, when he grows to manhood, he may not rival by his genius a Watt, an Arkwright, or even a Newton? It may be true, indeed, that the peculiar habits of a parent's mind, as well as his mode of living, may affect, to a considerable extent, the mental faculties of his offspring; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the degree of capacity or incapacity which this may produce. That national character depends, in some measure, on these influences, there is reason to believe; but, whatever may be the differences thus effected, let it be remembered, that these are, in reality, part of the elements which enter into the question we are considering;—that it is not the state of a particular generation of which we speak, but the result of the discipline of centuries; and could it even be proved, that a particular race communicates its own stupidity or intelligence to the mind of its infant offspring, antecedent to all education, this would not essentially alter the case, it would only remove the effect of discipline further back. To whatever distance backwards we suppose the influence to extend by which character and talent are affected, still, originally, mind is the same; and it is, after all, a peculiar mode of training which mainly causes the difference.

This being admitted, let us observe the differences between the savage and the civilized man. Were we to take the extremes of society, we might draw the comparison between the educated inhabitant of England and the rude native of New Holland,—a naked, grovelling, brutal cannibal, without settled habitation, without even the storing instinct belonging to many of the inferior animals; depending from day to day on the precarious produce of the land or sea; sometimes labouring under the pangs of extreme destitution, and continually exhibiting all the selfishness and ferocity which the cravings of hunger sometimes produce on the minds of persons more civilized.

But we need not descend to so degrading and mortify

ing an exhibition of human nature. If we look at the wild Indian tribes of North America, and compare them with their neighbours of European extraction, natives of the same country and the same climate, the contrast will be sufficiently striking. For two centuries they have lived in the immediate vicinity of civilized men, but they have made scarcely any advancement in civilized life. They roam their native woods in search of fruits, roots, or wild animals, to satisfy the cravings of hunger, neither practising the arts of agriculture, nor even, to any extent, the less artificial occupation of the shepherd state. Their wretched wigwams, rudely constructed of the branches of trees, serve merely for shelter from the rain and cold, and contain little of what deserves the name either of furniture or of domestic implements. The men, when not engaged in the necessary toils of the chase, bask indolently in the sun, while they compel their women to bear the whole labour of domestic drudgery. For their clothing they are indebted to their intercourse with the whites, who exchange cloth for the furs of their native animals; and if they show any ingenuity in handicraft, it is excited by their desire either for this necessary, or for weapons by which they may secure their prey; or, still more powerfully perhaps, by their passion for fermented liquors, with which they render their debased minds more brutal than ever. Turn now to the more active and enlightened intruders into their original haunts, and what do you behold? You see, as the fruit of their skill and industry, the trees which encumbered their fertile soil, levelled, to give place to fields teeming with vegetable wealth, and furnishing abundant supplies for the manufacture of food and clothing; while these very trees themselves are converted into a thousand ingenious instruments, and means of comfort and transportation; sometimes affording materials for substantial and commodious habitations; sometimes fashioned into implements of husbandry; sometimes forming machinery, which a thousand-fold facili