PREFACE.

In the Preface to the "Pre-Adamite Earth," I stated that the principles or laws there adduced, and applied to the successive stages of the ancient earth, would be exhibited in their historical development, in a short series of treatises (each treatise complete in itself) in relation to individual man, to the family, to the nation, to the Son of God, to the church which he has founded, to the revelation which he has completed, and to the future prospects of humanity. Accordingly, the principles which were there seen holding their way through the successive kingdoms of primæval nature, are here resumed, and are exhibited in their next and higher application to individual man.

On the day of man's creation it was, that law first subjectively reigned on earth. Prior to that event, the so-called laws of nature were mere modes of Divine operation, known only to the mind of the Creator. But a being had now come who could consciously stand face to face with them, could conceive of them, employ them, and ascend in homage from them to the

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Divine Lawgiver. In him, all these pre-existing laws were recapitulated, and others were superadded. He himself was a system of moral government. Not only was the grand process of the Divine disclosure to be continued in man and by him, but he was so constituted that to him the entire manifestation was to be made. The laws of the Divine procedure, therefore, are here distributed into three Parts, consisting of the end aimed at; the method of attaining it; and the reasons for the employment of that method.

The grounds for the adoption of this three-fold arrangement may be more explicitly stated thus: - reverentially assuming, first, that every step of the Divine procedure is related and tending to an ultimate end; it may be inferred, secondly, that "the only wise God" who "seeth the end from the beginning," pursues that end, not improvidently and uncertainly, but according to an all-comprehending method; and, thirdly, that the method chosen involves special reasons why it has been preferred. For unless we can suppose the Divine Being to be coerced by a necessity superior to himself, or to be bound by the iron mechanism of fate, we must infer that He has intelligently devised, and voluntarily adopted, the entire plan of his procedure; and if so, it follows that He has done so for reasons, or "according to the counsel of his own will." These three parts, though inseparably united, are essentially distinct.

An illustration of this view may be taken from Scripture;"the heavens declare the glory of God." Here, first, the end they answer is plainly affirmed; they declare the glory of their Creator. But, secondly, what is the method by which this end is attained? Doubtless, ever since there has been an intelligent eye to behold them, the mere splendor, numbers, and magni

tudes of the heavenly bodies, have been incessantly awakening convictions in the human mind of the "eternal power and Godhead." Beyond this, however, astronomy enables us to measure those vast masses, to calculate their distances, and to determine their motions. It shows that the celestial mechanism is constructed according to a scientifically calculated method, which is always unfolding to the observant eye; and that, being pervaded by laws, it is ever pointing to the Lawgiver. But why thirdly, the adoption of the special method, or particular laws, which we find in actual operation? They cannot be shown to be necessary. No doubt, laws and properties of some kind, matter must have. But, for aught which can be shown to the contrary, the nature or form of the laws existing might have been variously modified. They exhibit signs of having been selected and instituted. What, then, if the laws of the celestial mechanism had been either indefinitely more simple and accessible, or more complicated and recondite, than they are? Who does not see that, on the former hypothesis, they would have been comparatively valueless as a means of man's intellectual development, and that, on the latter, he must have remained in ignorance of all the proofs which they now exhibit of original adjustment by a designing Mind? If, however, the earth is to be the scene of man's mental and religious education, the existing constitution of the heavens is admirably adapted to furnish him alike with a portion of his science and of a well-reasoned natural theology. And in this Divine adjustment of the laws of mind and matter, a true philosophy will recognize, at least, one reason for the actual method or mechanism of the heavens.

Though only a subordinate matter, it may not be out of place to state my reasons for the space accorded, in the first Part, to

the consideration of the human constitution and of natural laws. While the present volume advances only, in man's historical career, to that opening stage when first he awoke to a consciousness of guilt, his constitution is for all duration. All his subsequent history is only its externalization and exponent. Its permanence alone, therefore, might justify our prolonged consideration of it. But the study of it is also essential to the intelligent appreciation of much of that Divine revelation which presupposes and appeals to it; as well as prepares the way for more effectually dealing with many of the supposed difficulties of revelation, or of showing that revelation has been unjustly burdened with them, since they belong properly to the more ancient department of human nature. Revelation only assumes them as facts already and independently existing; but it is no more answerable for them than the old religion of Egypt was, because it built its temples and monuments on the banks of the Nile, for the mystery in which the fountains of that river are hid; or than the Moral Law is responsible for the unsolved problems of geology and meteorology, because the Divine Lawgiver appropriately uttered his voice from among the granite crags of Sinai, and aggravated the appalling splendors of the scene by piling the mountain with dark thunder-clouds. True; the God-made man, and the God-inspired word, are two parts of one whole - two compartments of one temple- but he who reserves all his difficulties and questionings for the inner, shows that he has passed through the outer court blindfold.

Respecting natural laws, also, I have been, incidentally, more specific and urgent than might have been deemed necessary, were it not for the conviction that the subject has not received that distinct recognition in much of our modern religious litera

ture, which its fundamental importance requires. Reasons explanatory, and, to a certain extent, exculpatory, of this comparative neglect might, if necessary, be easily assigned; such, for example, as the idea of thereby magnifying, by implication, the claims of God's providential administration, and of rendering additional homage to it. But one of the evil consequences has been, that some parties have been led to pursue the opposite extreme; and that, by simply recalling attention to the course and constitution of nature, they have come to be regarded by many almost in the light of grand discoverers- -as peculiar benefactors of their species - as possessed of a kind of knowledge more immediately useful than any religious teachingand as being justified in silently omitting all mention of the doctrine of an ever-active Providence, or even in indirectly protesting against it. The erroneous supposition appears to be, that Nature and Providence are two hostile claimants; and that whatever importance is ceded to the one is so much homage taken from the other. The truth being, however, that the former is properly opposed only to chance or an unreasoning caprice, and the latter to a blind necessity. Nature is the primary utterance of Providence its first proclamation respecting the laws according to which it proposes to govern. But that it is neither restricted to any given natural laws, nor ultimately dependent on them, is evident from the fact that the history of creation is a history of changes and additions unknown to all the previous course of nature; man himself being one of the latest, the crowning addition.

These topics, however, are only incidental to the main subject. As to the filling up of my outline in the following pages, with what may be called the Proem of man's eventful history,