from the wind, and bears up to the encounter as if Ætna and Vesuvius were spouting at each other cataracts of flame. There can be no land battle when steam cannon shall pour their torrents of shot on the one side and the other, and annihilate both armies before they come within sound of their trumpets. Nor is this terrible agency the only means it possesses of preserving peace. It is to bring mankind into a common brotherhood; annihilate space and time in the intercourse of human life; increase the social relations; draw closer the ties of philanthropy and benevolence; multiply common benefits, and the reciprocal interchange of them, and by a power of yet unknown kindness, give to reason and religion an empire which they have but nominally possessed in the conduct of mankind. The changes which are produced in all the relations of life by the mechanic arts, forces upon us the inquiry, whence is their impulse? From what source is their power derived? They act primarily upon the elements of nature, but these elements are always the same. "The velocity of lightning, the sound of thunder, the power of the wind, do not increase. The heat of the sun, the blueness of the sky, the freshness of the mountain air, the solemn grandeur of the trackless ocean, remain unaltered. The nest of the bird improves no more than his plumage; the habitation of the beaver no more than his fur; and lovely as is the melody of the lark, the unchanged accents of its morning hymn, daily proclaim to us from the firmament of heaven, that, in the congregation of the works of nature, there is no distinction of tenses, for that what is, and what was, and what will be, are the same." Gravitation, magnetism, steam, are precisely what they were at the creation of the world. The earth, in its successive revolutions of four thousand years, has neither gained nor lost a second of time. Space, which is measured with so much exactness, and time, which is determined with such absolute precision, is each what it was before the pendulum was applied to practical use. The physical power of man varies very little from what it originally was. Yet everything about it is in progress of change. Whence is the cause? Who is the mighty artificer that travels over creation, and uses at his pleasure the materials of nature? MIND. THE HUMAN MIND, the only progressive and improvable agent known to us in the universe of God; that indescribable and mysterious existence, of whose nature and condition neither science nor philosophy can teach us, but whose actual being and immortal duration is assured to us by innate feeling and a sublime faith. The first lesson we are taught by experience, and the first sentiment which is encouraged by hope is, that it is itself the great and exclusive object of human concern; that man, the undying, imperishable, eternal man, the same in this world and that which is to come, is the care of an overruling Providence; that the welfare of the race is the proper object of his affections, and that as this object is more and more developed, it will be found most consistent with his individual happiness, that for the great purpose of his existence he is endowed with powers extensive and improvable; thrown upon his own resources, left to his own responsibility. That the grand machinery of creation is intended not to improve matter, but man, to advance him and not that, so that his qualities of mind should be brought out and brightened, and made useful; his affections purified and ennobled, and that in all the relations he sustains, according to the measure of his individual capacity, in the class in which he is placed - he should be prepared for that superior station, and worthy of that immortal existence which he is destined to enjoy. |