figured. His ear only had been wanting to discover that its sounds were music. Classes of animals, since domesticated, had awaited his sway, and developed new qualities under it. He is their melior natura, the mediator for lower natures, and his influence over them a perpetual benediction. They look up to him, and he carries the look up to God. Everything now began to stand for something above itself. Literally, "truth sprang out of the earth." Nature was no longer an outside show. Its great symbolism had found an interpreter. Its objects supplied the mind with images for ideal conceptions; and forthwith passed into human language. Nature was indulged by man's presence, and exalted. Ordained "without hands," he was its minister and high-priest. The great temple in which he served was filled with emblems of the Divine Presence. As he walked to the altar, the proofs of goodness lay profusely in his path; and the light by which he ministered was a symbol of purity. Nature had kept no sabbath; but heavenly days were now to be intercalated; and, through his lips, " everything that had breath was to praise the Lord." Providence no longer limits its cares to "the lilies of the field" or to "the fowls of the air;" henceforth it charges itself with the well-being of a creature, "how much better than they!" Even "Righteousness looks down from heaven;" and descends to govern him. Physical laws are promoted into a moral discipline. The kingdoms of nature have, in a sense unknown before, become the kingdom of our God. Life has become a religion. Lord, what is man! Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor!" CHAPTER VI. ACTIVITY. 1. WE regard it as a law of creation, " that everything manifests all that it is calculated to exhibit of the Divine Nature, by developing, or working out its own nature." A creation devoid of regulated activity would be no manifestation of an ever-living and ever-active Creator. It is only by a universe of activity that He can be manifested to whose activity the universe owes its existence. Still more may an active nature be expected in that order of creatures whose distinction it is to be, that not only by them, but to them, the manifestation will be made. For such activity may be looked for in them if only to help them to understand, by sympathy, the same property in the Divine Nature. Accordingly, man is constituted a selfregulating force, pressing like the power of a spring on every resistance, and requiring unlimited time and space for the development of his energies. Everything within him and around him indicates that he is designed to occupy a sphere of activity which circumscribes, and indefinitely exceeds, every sphere of activity known to the prior creation. 2. Every part of the bodily frame circulates more or less rapidly. "At every moment," says Liebig, "with every expiration, parts of the body are removed, and are emitted into the atmosphere." The motion of any one part of the body involves the motion of every other part. The mechanism of certain parts admits of action more instantaneous than the quickest suggestion of the will. 3. But man was made for voluntary external action. This is evident, on the one hand, from the fact that a state of inactivity is soon attended with a sense of uneasiness. Standing still quickly tires. Properly speaking, there is no standing still; "the action of standing, consists, in fact, of a series of small and imperceptible motions, by which the centre of gravity is perpetually shifted from one part of the base to another." Besides which, the mechanical properties of the living frame soon suffer deterioration, if they lie idle; the power of the muscles diminish, and the strength of resistance in its bones and tendons degenerate. On the other hand, activity develops the physical structure, augments its power, and is attended, as the playful motions of the young of all animals show, with muscular pleasure. 4. The appetites are regularly urging us to activity in order to their gratification. Mere sensations, or impressions from without, may be pleasurable; but as if to prevent their terminating in themselves, or detaining us from activity, they require to be frequently varied. "The continuance of an impression on any one organ, occasions it to fade." Let the eye look steadfastly on one object, and the image is soon lost. The senses themselves require to have their reports compared, and mutually corrected; thus keeping the mind on the alert, and involving its activity. Perception, reflection, and reasoning, all suppose attention either to external or internal phenomena; and attention is the mind in an active state. We know only as we act. Our notions of time, space, and all their modifications, involve a certain activity of mind. Activity is the condition of all knowledge. What, also, is the object of emotion, but action? What is the office of volition, but to determine the direction our activity shall take? What the design of conscience, but to indicate the course which it ought to take? 5. Let us pass from the constitution of man to the constitution of the world around him, and to which he is preconfigured. Here, we find, "all things full of labor;" thus sympathizing with his own susceptibilities of activity, as well as inviting and inciting him to it. That sensibility to the varieties of temperature, which is seated in the skin, is, the physiologist informs us, a never-failing excitement to activity, and a constant source of enjoyment. Those objects which appeal to man's appetites, promise gratification only on the condition of his muscular exertion to appropriate them. A world of raw material surrounds him. Nature sells everything good, and effort is the price. As a social being, his affections are kept in constant play to provide for the safety, comfort, and well-being of their objects. As an intelligent being, the objects of knowledge lie around him in apparent disorder. If he would perceive, he must approach them; if understand, he must compare them; if reason, he must arrange and classify them; if believe, he must call for and examine the necessary evidence. The physical points him forwards to the metaphysical; and from phenomena he finds himself beckoned onwards to the reality of ultimate facts. Every relation which he discovers, and every law which he verifies, proclaims his patient activity, and is its precious fruit. Even his knowledge of duty is not a spontaneous growth, but comes to him as the result of consideration, and has to be guarded with jealous care. While, as the subject of emotion, objects and events are constantly awakening fresh susceptibilities, and thus making him known to himself. 6. The power of volition with which man is endowed is never allowed to rest; for he finds himself constantly solicited by different objects, or attempting to master the difficulties which lie in his path. If the difficulty relate to an object of knowledge, spontaneously the mind tasks its power to pierce the obscurity. And this effort is "a concentration upon one point of forces before diffused." According to Spinoza, indeed, action is only another name for goodness, and passion for evil; and the only difference between the good man and the bad is, that the former has a greater power of action in him than the latter. But, rejecting this extreme and one-sided view, it is unquestionable that this power is essential to virtue. Man is a cause, and is constantly acting under the conviction that, amidst all the external influences which surround him, he has the power of reaction and self-regulation. These opposing external agents are necessary in order to acquaint him with his own causative power, and to develop it. Even Fichte, while denying a material universe, had to suppose an ideal objective, in order to afford a sphere of activity to the subjective. He admits that it is only by such means that we can "place before us, as object, the end and aim of our existence." On the faith of our consciousness, however, we find ourselves placed in the midst of a real objective. And in this external sphere, everything in turn appeals to our causative power, and challenges us to exercise it. Calls to vigilance, gratitude, and usefulness, appeal to our sense of obligation; and make activity a duty, and a means of moral excellence. 7. Without object or impulse, every part of our active nature would soon be lost to us, or rather, would never be known to us. But with these, that active power is disclosed to us; by exercise it is increased; difficult and occasional acts become easy and confirmed habits; physical weakness is replaced by muscular strength; ignorance by knowledge; and a mere sense of duty grows into a course of intelligent and delighted obedience. Thus, activity is a law of our nature, and the condition of its development. How impressively was this fact disclosed to the first man on the day of his creation. The fruits and luxuriance of paradise were not a dispensation from labor, but a call to it; for there his Maker placed him "to till it, and to keep it." His intellectual powers were called into exercise by the task assigned him, to observe, compare, and give appropriate names to the animals; while his moral nature probably received its first impulse, and was quickened into a state of activity, from which it has never since ceased, by the sovereign interdict of the probationary tree. He was no sooner made, than every great part of his nature was put into motion by an appropriate impulse from the hand of God; and in that activity he became conscious of his own faculties, and began to develop them. But if activity be thus a law of our nature, how hopeless is the task of some in aiming to combine happiness and inactivity! How infatuated those who regard the enjoyment of the heavenly world as consisting in luxurious indolence! The rest of heaven is a calm opposed, not to activity, but to suffering. Relative to the activity of "the living creatures," the many-winged and myriad-eyed symbols of the highest celestial life, it is said, that "they rest not." The perpetual striving after self-development, the struggle to bring into actual existence all that lies potentially in our nature, which here encounters so many obstacles, is there resumed, and resumed under advantages which are here unknown. Every step there is advance in the ever-present light of distant, yet approachable, perfection. Heaven is a state of greater enjoyment, and progress in excellence, than earth, partly because of its superior scope for activity. CHAPTER VII. RELATIONS. 1. WE seem warranted to expect "that the process of the Divine disclosure into which man has come will be carried on by a system of means, or of medial relations." For, in no other way, as far as we know, can we be brought to conceive of the relation which the Creator himself sustains to his own creation. And, if the creation is designed to answer an end, it is only as every part of it sustains a relation to that end, and, therefore, to every other part- a relation of mutual dependence and influence that the end can be attained. Now the complicated and universal activity of the human being discloses a system of relations, not merely equal to all the relations of the pre-existing creation, but indefinitely exceeding them. Absolute division or isolation is, here, impossible. Our attention no sooner fixes on a given faculty or function, than we find it to be an indivisible part of an all-related aggregate united in the integrity of the living man. 2. Relations exist between the various parts of his physical, his organic, and his animal systems respectively, and between these three considered mutually and collectively. Each part is sympathetically and really united to the other two, nor can either of them act or suffer without the others being consentaneously affected. A change in one part would render neces |