pires, erected pyramids and towers, and beautified the earth with cottage and palace. He has reclaimed the wandering savage of his own species, called into existence and governed political communities, given to social life the security of its laws, and adorned it with the arts and refinement of civilization, science, and religion. He has scanned the heavens, penetrated the earth, and navigated its seas. He has converted deserts into cities, made islands in the ocean, and turned in the sea upon the solid land. He has shown that the animal and vegetable kingdoms are made to balance and sustain each other, according to general laws; he has recorded the general facts or results which proceed from the skilful adjustment in the natural world made by the great Creator. By his advancement in science and the arts, he has contended successfully with the elements of nature, and decomposed or combined them, neutralized them or given them vigor. By his acquaintance with the laws of mechanism and motion, he has asserted his power over the material world, and directed its agencies almost at his pleasure. The analytical powers of his mind have been successfully employed in pursuits that have furnished noble specimens of thought and intellect. He has busied himself with whatever can be numbered and measured, and with a clearness, caution, and accuracy that have surpassed even his

own hopes. The painted canvass, the sculptured marble, receive life and beauty from his hands; while he so concentrates and directs the scattered rays of the light of heaven, that, at his bidding, they perform more accurate and delicate tracings. There is no enterprise, and no sphere of knowledge, in which he has been employed, which has not acknowledged his authority. Prose has recorded his deeds, and they have been sung in poetry. Libraries are the monuments of his toil and perseverance; alcove upon alcove, in the deep recesses of time, have treasured up the records of his dominion. This dominion is man's immunity as God's creature; he has a divine right to it, because he is a man. He is a prince in earth's empire, and not a subject. He has but one superior; he himself is sovereign in the dominion thus delegated to him by the great Lord of all.

There is one more thought which here deserves consideration, and that is, that this first man was the parent of the race. This thought must furnish the subject of our next chapter. In the mean time, we may not dismiss our general topic, without a single reflection.

We are men. Yet is there something within us that forces the conviction upon our minds, that our honor is tarnished. The comeliness of our humanity is obscured; its high adornment is departed. O, why is it, that we cannot look toward

heaven without the blush of shame upon our cheek! Some foul enemy has been busy with our race. "Man that is in honor abode not." Sin has effected this mournful degradation in this highest and noblest work of God. "The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us, for we have sinned !" Yet are we not outcasts, and banished like Cain. Everlasting thanks to God, this reproach of humanity may be wiped away. Man's nature is even more than ever dignified by its alliance with the second Adam, who, when it lost all its redeeming qualities, embodied it with his own, and for disgrace gave it honor. It was the promise to the first man, that there should be One, "of woman born," who would rescue from degradation and shame. He has rescued. Multitudes have by him been made kings and priests to God, and live and reign with him forever. Self-respect ought to make every man a Christian. He must forget that he is a man, and lose all consciousness of his real worth, if he aim not thus at humanity's prize and high calling. An unchristian man! no, let me not be an unchristian man. An unchristian life, an unchristian death, an unchristian eternity, O my soul, come not thou into their secret, to their assembly, mine honor be not thou united! The time is coming when such a man will be indeed dishonored. No voice of love will greet him in his exile, and his punishment will be greater than

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he can bear. The star of hope will never rise over his dark way in that far-off land of sin and shame.

Seek then to elevate the intellectual above the animal, the moral above the physical, the spiritual and eternal above the material and temporal. The redemption that has been achieved for man, more than all things else, indicates his destiny. His aspirations and hopes indicate it; it remains for him to watch and pray that he commit not the suicidal act of destroying his own soul.

CHAPTER IV.

The Anity of the Buman Race.

WE proceed, as we intimated in the last chapter, to call the attention of the reader to the question of the unity of the human race. Whether the first man spoken of by Moses, was literally the first man, and the parent of the entire race of human beings, is an inquiry to which different answers have for the most part been given, as different authors have been believers, or disbelievers, in a supernatural revelation. Where the subject is investigated simply by the phenomena of nature and the lights of science, there indeed are those who have come to the conclusion, that all mankind are not the descendants of one common pair. Men imbued with Christian truth do not complain of these philosophical inquiries; for they are more and more satisfied that on this subject, as well as every other, the works and the word of God, when both are known and understood, are perfectly harmonious. The greatest naturalists in