meaning of each form and physical attribute, and required no anatomy to prove the benevolence of design; since every creature expressed, in every action, its own happiness, and all nature responded in joy to the benediction of God. The power, the will, and the pleasure of activity were in man united, in tilling the ground and replenishing the fruitful earth with all that might be cultivated by his skillful hand, to administer to his taste for beauty, or his need for aliment; and it was man's appointed business so to direct his knowledge of nature and necessity, as to contribute, by his wise employment of nature's productiveness, to the wants and pleasures of all the sentient creatures over which he held dominion. Thus the life of man was actively engaged in multiplying blessings, and therefore he felt that life was blessed; he loved to live, because he lived in love, and satisfied the demand of every day by daily taking fresh fruit from the tree of life, as if from the hand of his God and Father. But he still needed a reciprocity of affectionate intercourse, and a fellowship in worship and authority. From his own flesh a help was formed for him by the finger of his Maker, for God knew that man required more than to reign alone over a dumb world, in order to the completion of his blessedness; since finite reason, without a corresponding heart, would need no tempter to turn the Garden of Eden into a solitary waste. Jehovah consummated his gifts, and brought to man a being that might lean upon his bosom, and with kindred love claim to speak with his heart. But human nature was intended to be the revelation of Omnipotence, and therefore, with all its duties, came also danger, and with every good, the possibility of evil. But the highest good was the highest test of the will, and therefore, with affection, man entered on that trial by which he proved himself dependent on God for the power of loving with a right spirit. Man chose to

partake with woman of the vain hope of living independently of God for knowledge and for wisdom. He loved the best creature that he could love more than he loved the Being who gave him that object of his heart; and woman wished to have something to confer on man besides herself and her love. He forgot that he was bound, by the very terms of his existence, to hold all his affections in the sanctity of obedience to the loftiest love, and she forgot that love was better than knowledge and dearer than life. They were created under law; they felt, they thought, they desired, they acted, they reigned under law; and the happiness of their disposition, of their ideas, of their actions, proved that the law of their creation and wellbeing was the benevolence and love of the Creator toward them, for God had so ordered Paradise, on purpose to please and to employ them. But there is duty in law, the creature must obey in order to be blest. The power imparted to man must be regulated by his own will to right ends, he must behave like a thinking spirit, and that can only be by limiting his actions in voluntary and intelligent obedience to acknowledged truth. With this necessary condition, the exercise of power leads only to the enjoyment of present realities, and, with ever-coming hopes, to the enlargement of faculty and fuller bliss. The knowledge of facts and objects is but mental chaos, without an understanding of the Divine intention in the order and plan of nature and Providence; and this intention is revealed to us, that we may learn that love is obeyed only by being trusted.

What might have been but for the fall we need not ask. Perhaps the words "might be” mean impossibility, and whatever is could not have been but as it is. At least we know that all events are managed by the Might that reconciles all things to himself. We may

still do what Adam did. He doubtless saw more and

more clearly as he studied the handiwork of God, that there is a constant coincidence between the lessons taught by physical order and those taught by moral ordinances; because the will of Heaven is expressed in both, and that will is alike wise and good. But in undue creaturely affection Adam lost sight of goodness and wisdom, and yielding to the voice that contradicted God, he neglected the first of all duties, that of self government, and fondly, and in mere sympathy, subordinated the lordship of his soul by giving to a beauteous creature the whole of his heart, and thus converted God's own temple into the house of idolatry and sin. We habitually do the very same thing. Herein we find proof of our fall, and the profundity of that fall. All the qualities which the first man possessed are visibly lapsed into disorder, and we see and feel them to be so in ourselves and in our associates. The fall is a fact in our own experience; we are born into it and can not raise ourselves out of it. Still, however, in some sort we retain those characteristics of mind which must have distinguished the first human being. There is sense, but it is abused; there is the love of life, but it regards not its source; there is the desire for knowledge, but it is naturally a vague curiosity, or, at best, but the love of natural science blended with curious doubts of manifest truth; there is the love of exercising power, but instead of the fostering dominion of a charitable reason devising good for all that it can serve, it is apt to become an assumption of a right to rule, so as to make government a tyranny of terror, and all obedience mere eyeservice; there is the love of sociality and of sex, but it is always ready to degenerate into the calculation of comforts, the dalliance of fond souls, or the luxuriance of romance and wantonness. Instead of affianced faith, with hopes sure and certain, there is fancy with her deluding phantasms, and expectations incompati

ble with Divine government; instead of wisdom learning humbly to work with her own hands in cultivating the rooted tribes of earth, while her soul is turned heavenwards, there is self-satisfied conceit, seeming to see something to laugh at in the distortions of humanity, and yet wondering at man's folly. Instead of a conscience open as light to light, there is cringing and cowardice, and creeping behind the trees to hide from God in the twilight; and instead of a free will, refusing to know evil, there is now a crash of opposing volitions and desires too frequently devoted to works of darkness. But we need not search for sin, it is every where-the similitude to God is gone from the soul of man. We acknowledge that we see his likeness in the moral law, but we do not find it in our hearts. If we look at them in the light we discern a substitute there which the grand Deceiver might have furnished. But, nevertheless, we know a way in which the image of God may be indelibly restored in true knowledge, righteous activity, sensible manifestation, unfailing faith, obedient power, love unfeigned, clear conscientiousness, and liberty of will.

The reception of truth in love is the restoration of the perfect man, and God's own spirit is its source.

We must be conscious of what we need before we shall seek for it, and we must know what is essential to a right state of mind before we shall discern our defects and desire their removal. Let us therefore look a little more closely into this subject.

For the purpose of obtaining a succinct and simple view of the prominent peculiarities of our mental and moral constitution, it will probably be sufficient to consider man in relation to his pleasures. In this view we must, in fact, include both his desires and his endowments, since he can desire only what he may believe shall contribute, either directly or indirectly, to his pleasure; and he can attain this end only by such

Thus by

means as are placed within his power. studying our inclinations and our aims we shall learn what is essential to our happiness, and ascertain whether we are employing our faculties in a manner calculated to secure our ultimate satisfaction. Every faculty is associated with its appropriate desire, and is exercised with an appropriate pleasure.

1st. Man is endowed with senses; hence the desire and the enjoyment of sense.

2d. Man is enabled to exert himself, and he desires to do so, and finds enjoyment in action.

3d. Man possesses the faculty of conceiving and contemplating the mental images of things not present to his senses; hence he possesses the desire, and experiences the pleasure, of exercising imagination, memory, and fancy.

4th. Man has intellect, or the power of thinking on the nature and property of things in relation to each other; hence he desires knowledge, and enjoys reflection and comparison.

5th. Man is capable of crediting statements beyond his actual experience, and he is apt to believe more than he can learn through his own senses; and in believing he finds pleasure.

6th. Man loves certain qualities which he esteems amiable; hence his desire for objects of affection and his pleasure in them.

7th. Man has the capacity of distinguishing good from evil in relation to moral law; he has a conscience, in the right state of which he desires to do his duty, and in so doing receives pleasure in selfapproval, and the approbation of God, and the good and goodwill of his neighbor.

Will, in the abstract, may be regarded as characteristic of consciousness: there is no mind without it. As the possibility of any pleasure implies the possibility of its opposite, pain; so there can be no sense