and intellectual being which he can be educated to be; and then, when his tuition is completed, and all his grand and lovely capabilities have been produced and established efficiently within him, and his primeval nature has thus become transformed and cultivated into a richer and nobler onethen a paradise will be, not his perversion, but his reward, and become to him a scene of godlike activities, of divine assimilation, and of proportionate felicity.

Our gracious Creator foresaw all these truths, but placed man at first in the garden of Eden, that it might become fixed in the memory of his human race, that perfect happiness was the appointed companion of perfect obedience to him; that human existence had begun with the enjoyment of this felicity, on this condition; and that the same paradisiacal state is only attainable again by the same means, and on the same principle. But being then unsuitable to man, in the unformed state of his primeval mind, he was removed from it into that mixed condition of nature, into that necessity of exertion, and that excitement to it, under which he has been ever since subsisting.

Very few circumstances have been transmitted to us of this second state of man, but it seems to have been a mixture of agricultural and pastoral life in its simplest state. The clothing of Adam and Eve was merely that of skins, a mode of dress which some of the northern Indians still use, and even the Wallachian peasantry. This is an important intimation in one respect, as it implies that the new abode of our first parents was of a different and colder temperature than that of Eden. It indicates a transfer from a torrid to a temperate zone, as for this an apparel of skins was best adapted. "Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground."* Thus Adam brought up his children to the several occupations of husbandry, and of domesticating the mildest class of the useful animals. Cain settled his family in that collected state which constitutes a town:t but it was not till the sixth generation after him that any of the arts began to be cultivated, and these first appeared among the children of his descendant Lamech. One of these began the Arab and Tartar style of living in tents * Genesis iv. 2.

"And he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch."--Gen. iv. 17.

and breeding cattle, so that this form of human society began before the flood: another invented the harp and the organ, or commenced the production and cultivation of the music of sound :† another became an artificer in brass and iron, and thereby indicates that he had found out a process for smelting metallic ores, and working them into serviceable instruments. These are all the notices we have of the oc

cupations of the antediluvian race. One portion of it was for some time more virtuous and religious than the other; but intermingling by marriages, the morality of all diminished and by the time that Noah had attained his five hundredth year, violence and voluptuousness had become the general habit of society, and characterized its individual life. The corruption was so universal as to be incurable. The same cause brought on the same effect. Disregard of the laws of God, and disobedience to him, produced, as their natural consequence, vice and evil, and destroyed human happiness. Mutual warfare and depredation on the one hand, and personal depravity on the other, made human life a scene of misery, and degraded and spoiled human nature itself. The plans and wishes of the Deity for the benefit and improvement of his human creatures, were thus again defeated by their rebellion and perversity. The blessings which he had caused the material course of nature which then prevailed to impart to them, had only made them more self-elated and contumacious. His gift of longevity had thus been abused into more powerful means of mischief and debasement and he resolved to terminate this condition of human nature by the extinction of its deteriorated population; and to renew it under an altered system of nature, and under new circumstances of its existence, which would constitute its third state, and which is that in which it has ever since continued, and is now subsisting. This revolution would be another monitory instance, that human happiness and obedience to God are inseparably linked together,

“Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle."-Gen. iv, 20.

↑ "His brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ."--Ib. 21.

Zillab bare Tubal-cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron."-Ib. 22. Genesis vi, 5, 11-13.

§ Genesis vi. 2.

and that man cannot live in the habit of disobedience to the divine laws, without perpetually producing moral evil and personal suffering. A deluge of waters that should overwhelm all that was living, was the chosen instrument of effecting this awful dispensation.

LETTER XIV.

Farther Reflections on the Conduct of our First Parents, and its Natu ral Causes and on the Nature and Effect of the Process carried on for the Improvement of Human Nature, and its Ulterior Completion.

THE surprise and censures of many have been excited by our first parents, acting as they did, and occasioning thereby the loss of a paradise to all their posterity; but in justice to them we must recollect, that it is most probable that every one of the descendants who blame them, would, in their situation have acted no better; and that if any other human beings of former ages, or any even of ourselves, were to be placed and circumstanced as they were, the same conduct and results would ensue. We ground this conclusion on the observed fact in daily life, that every one who has sprung from them often imitates their error by sinning against better knowledge and better resolutions, and even right intentions. That hell is paved with good intentions, was the strong figurative expression of one of our most distinguished moralists; and the universal application of the remark to every age and individual, is as undeniable as its truth. If the good intention were sufficient, if to mean well were the same as to do well, or would necessarily and most certainly produce the corresponding action, there would be little vice or error in the world; but it is because we do not carry the good intention into the actual practice; it is because we feel and know what is right and proper, and most usually wish and mean to do it, but yet do not put the becoming purpose into execution, but repeatedly deviate from the good intention and even resolution, into the action and indulgence which is contrary to it, that we ourselves so often misconduct our life; and that immorality, crime, sin, and

suffering, are so intermingled and so prolonged among mankind. It is because we do not individually exert and direct our self-agency, to restrain us from the wrong practice, that both moral and natural evil so much pervade society still, and have been such adhering residents among us.

But if we, if the present race, the last of all the generations that have been living through almost sixty centuries, are stili in this predicament, still acting with this unreasonableness and weakness; if we, with all the corrective and admonishing benefit of so much experience, are yet so infirm of purpose, and so defective in self-government, ought we to press the deficiency so hardly against our similarly acting predecessors 1-or, omit to perceive both the justice and the necessity of our divine Author's having put human life into that state of discipline which alone has kept it so tolerable; which has prevented so much greater deterioration that would have ensued without it; and which has already led it to so many improvements, that would have been thought impossible by any of the contemporaries of either Adam or Noan, or even of Socrates and Cicero Much, indeed, remains yet to do. Sighing for ourselves and others, we must all, with self-humbling sincerity, admit this truth; but let us also be candid as to ourselves, and just to our Maker's Wisdom and effectively chosen measures. Much has been already accomplished in the meliorating process; bias plans and means are achieving grand effects. He has exalted his human being into ennobling improvements. He has thus far largely, variously, and beautifully regenerated his human nature into new features, to a new heart, and with a new spirit Both the moral and the intellectual aspects of the world have now a more sunny appearance than ever, amid all its shades and deformities. The soul of man is visibly a new being already, compared with what it has been, and it is perceptibly on the advance. The rectifying agencies have never been so active or so successful, as they are at this moment; nor is there any chance that the improving energies will diminish. Vast impulses too have become active, and are struggling for superiority But a new creating spirit has also sprung everywhere into life, and is pursuing and Iepressing whatever actuates to mislead

The hand of our Maker is upon mankind; and what he has excited or is watching, he will guide, guard, teach, and in due time, and

Iwith all his fine and diversified complication of impulses, restraints, suggestions, aids, disciplines, and government, will conduct to the grand issues that he means to educe from it.

We find moral evil existing around us, as we grow up into observation and judgment. It must then have originated from those who preceded us. Our ancestors have therefore both committed and transmitted it. As far as we can carry up our inquiry, history presents the same defects and stains in the conduct of our species. It must then have begun from some portion of our predecessors, in the very earliest stages of human existence, because mankind, in no part of antiquity, appear without it; of its origin we have only one account. The singularity of this soleness is a strong indication of the veracity of its information; it is what no one was likely to have invented, and it comes to us with this recommendation to our belief, independently of the authority of the memorial record which contains it, that if we reject this account of its commencement, we have no other. It is this narrative which rescues us from utter ignorance of that which we are so deeply interested, so vitally concerned, truly to know. It will always deserve our pro

foundest meditation.

There are some peculiar facts connected with Adam and Eve, which make it more likely that they should have erred than even ourselves. We possess the accumulated experience, for many ages, of the folly and mischief of vicious actions, and of disobedience to God; and yet this is found insufficient to deter the myriads and millions who disregard it. Our first parents had no such result before them; all was new and untried at their period of existence. No suffering had occurred to tell them what pain was, or by its occurring from immoral or offending conduct, to admonish them against the conduct which would bring it upon them. A few other important particulars may be here also recollected. Adam and Eve, although the ancestors of all human beings, were not in many very important points such human beings as we are, or as all their posterity have been. They were made, and not born. They were made at once full formed, and did not grow, as all their descendants have done, from the babe to the child, the child to the youth, and thence to the mature human being. They had no parent,