Science like this is the intellectual character of our terrestrial habitation. As far as chymistry and natural philosophy can carry their researches, they find all things on our earth resolvable into simpler conditions, and ultimately into primary atoms or molecules, of which every visible substance is composed. Even those things which, from the sameness of their apparent matter, and from their not having been decomposed, are at present called simple substances, to distinguish them from what have been analyzed farther, are still but combinations of numerous adhering particles, whether of the same specific kind or not.†

Nature has always met the mortal eye in this compounded state, because its structure was completed before human existence began; and the elementary molecules can nowhere now be found in their primary or single state; nor can our art simplify any thing into this primeval form. Everywhere we see matter in artificial compositions, and it recedes from our sight and touch before we can divide it into its earliest particles. But as these original atoms could not move themselves into those myriads and millions of definite organizations and 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

geometrical figures on the sand, "Courage! my companions! here are the footsteps of men."

"All, or almost all, the substances found upon the globe of the earth, have been subjected to chymical investigation. The result has been, that all the animal and vegetable substances without exception, and by far the greatest number of mineral bodies, ARK COMPOUND."--Dr. Thomson's Inorganic Chymistry, v. i. p. 2.

The opinion at present entertained by chymists in general is, that simple substances are aggregates of very minute particles, incapable of farther diminution, and therefore called atoms."--Dr. Thomson, ib. p. 3. VOL. II.-D

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 human race, as the most prominent of its contents. 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 knowledge 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 cansed his same

elation 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; although 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 knowledge, 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, though 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 knowledge 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 that other theories of the origin of things, although as fantastic as ignorance or folly could make them, were substituted instead. Though some few minds at all times seem to have withstood the stream of popular extravagance, yet they could not arrest the mental deterioration on this subject.

Even in ancient Greece the creation of the world was not the opinion of the multitude, nor the public tenet of their priesthood. The cosmogony on which the ancient paganism was founded in the Grecian states, was that strange system which Hesiod has detailed in his Theogony ;* and which Homer seems not to have discredited. This represents a chaos and a night without a Deity, to have been the first state of things; and deduces thence the earth, and from the earth, or from the anterior confusion of matter, those divin

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* Hesiod says, that the Muses, the nine daughters of Mnemosyne, or Memory, sang, "First the venerated race of the gods, whom the earth and the spacious Oupavos or sky brought forth from the beginning. From these were produced the gods, the givers of good (eyevʊvro).”— Theog. 41-6 He called upon them to "celebrate the sacred race of the ever-existing immortals, who were born (EYEVOVTO) out of the earth and the starry sky, and in the dark night, and whom the salt sea (TOVTOS) nourished."-415-7.

After farther invocations for their inspiration, he details the system, which makes chaos the first of all things. From this came Erebus and black night, and from that ether and the day. The earth then produced the starry sky to cover itself, and then proceeded to bring forth the mountains, sea, and long train of gods and giants, which he enumerates. -Hes. Theog. v. 116-153.

↑ Homer makes Somnus, or Sleep, refuse to Juno to close the eyes of Jupiter. He says, "I could easily put into slumber any other of the ever-existing gods, even the billows of the flowing ocean that has brought them all in being; but not the son of Saturn, unless he desire it." He gives as his reason, “that having once before done so, Jupiter would have thrown me into the sea, unless night, the tamer of gods and men, had preserved me; for though much enraged, he was afraid of exciting the displeasure of swift night."-Iliad, I. xiv. v. 244-262. These ideas represent the ocean as the parent of Homer's divinities, and, night as their master, whom even Jupiter dreaded.