In every part you detect the peculiar properties of the oak. It is not more unnatural for the peach to ripen on the bough of a sycamore, or the rich bloom of the magnolia to unfold itself on the chestnut, than warm appeals to the passions to be scattered along the path of cold narration or philosophical exposition; for the branches to unite themselves to the trunk by the twigs and leaves, than argumentative inference and explanatory remark to follow urgent exhortation. The mind is subject to its own laws in all its operations, and stubbornly resists every effort to move it in contradiction to those laws. Truth that is unfolded discordantly with these laws cannot meet with a ready entrance. Persuasion cannot thus be made to precede conviction; nor excitement of the feelings, intellectual apprehension. The mind refuses to believe before it understands, and to be turned off from the warm sunny regions of the fancy or of the feelings to the icy sterility of pure argumentation. It equally refuses, when it would feel strongly, or think clearly and vigorously, to put itself at the beck of mere caprice, and follow the motions of an ignis fatuus. Not only is it repugnant to taste, but hostile to intellectual apprehension and conviction, as well as to strong feeling and decision, to mingle species with genus, and genus with species; to blend together in the same discourse heterogeneous views, even although they may have some coherence with the general subject; to make oaks, in short, spring from corn seed, or twig and leaf from the root or trunk instead of from the bough and branch. Every living germ, finally, seeks complete and perfect development. Nature, unobstructed from without, never stops short of what is perfect in its kind. One-sided developments, truncated, or dismembered shapes, prove that her work has been interfered with. It is the undertaking of perfect art, to give nature a free and full development, unimpeded by any foreign force. It can never deem its work completed, until the development be carried forward in all its parts, to the suspending of the last leaf and the coloring of the last flower. Such is the conception of a perfect work of art in eloquence; a single germ of thought germinated in a congenial soil, expanded in natural symmetry, unity of character to completeness in every limb, leaf, and fibre. Our discussion has been so far extended, that we shall forego obviating some objections that may be raised to the view we have presented. We entertain a firm conviction that the view presented is founded in truth; and that, if we have succeeded in giving a proper representation of it as it lies in our own mind, it will commend itself to the convictions of others. If it be correct, it certainly is of the highest importance to the pulpit orator that he thoroughly possess himself of this idea of a perfect discourse. Not only will it enable him to render each particular effort more effective on the minds of his hearers, but it will also enable him to secure a richer variety to his preaching; for every particular discourse will have its own particular mode of development. It will likewise, as we have had occasion to remark, contribute greatly to fertility of invention, and not less to the culture of taste; for every new effort in composition will afford a fresh occasion for the exercise of, taste. It will, moreover, save him from that fatal mental condition into which the regular pastor, who, Sabbath after Sabbath, for years and years of a laborious life, must come before his people with the prepared word of exhortation and instruction, is so liable to fall: the habit of regarding the preparation for the pulpit a mere drudgery-as mechanical a thing as the treading of the furrow by the ploughman, calling for no effort of creative power, and consequently giving no spring or life to any mental faculty. ARTICLE IV. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN IN HIS SPIRITUAL RELATIONS. By SAMUEL ADAMS, M. D., Professor of Chemistry and Natural History, Illinois College. Und was die innere Stimme spricht, Introduction. SCHILLER. ALL sentient beings are subject to wants. That is, they are so constituted as to render the attainment of certain ends necessary to their very existence. Each animal is gifted with certain powers of activity, and subjected to certain instinctive desires or vital appetences. To find a sphere for the exertion of its powers, to attain the objects of its desires, is a necessity of its being. When all its powers find their appropriate sphere of action, and its sentient nature meets the objects towards which it aspires, then it is that the animal may be said to live and enjoy. To fail of either of these ends involves imperfection, disorder, decay, or death. No animal is a fit representative of his species, which is not allowed to move in the sphere assigned to it by its Creator. That is not the real eagle that is trained up within the confines of a cage. If you would see the royal bird in all the sublimity and perfection of his nature, you must view him with giant wing sporting upon the dark bosom of the storm, and listen to his wild scream, shrilling above the roar of the tempest. The real lion is not reared within the limits of bars and grates. You may see him now crouching beneath the dark jungles of the East, and now darting with terrific fury upon the huge boar of the forest. Thus it will be seen that every animal is organized for a peculiar destiny. To reach that destiny is its good, but to fail of that object is to lose the great end of its existence. Happily, however, the countless millions of living beings that inhabit our earth are not doomed to this disappointment. Sentient nature, as it is displayed around us, exhibits one vast system of harmonious relations. We see, on the one hand, every variety of active powers, each moving in a sphere of delightful activity; on the other, every appetite and desire enjoying in full fruition all its objects of gratification. The eye is adapted to the light, and to receive through it the impressions of the pleasing variety of form and color of the objects and scenes around us. wing finds delightful exertion in cleaving the buoyant air,—the webbed foot and fin in gliding through the liquid wave. want is unsupplied; no desire unsatisfied. Each sentient existence awakes to the enjoyment of its season of delightful activity, and finds every longing satisfied, till at length it gently sinks to its last repose on the kindly bosom of nature. The No These are no speculations of a vain philosophy, but the sober deductions of an enlightened reason. It is a principle of universal belief, that there is somewhere in nature a supply for every want, a scope for the free exercise of every living power; and this conviction is confirmed by the observation and experience of all time. Some may be disposed to maintain that there exists an exception to this principle in the history and present condition of the human race. We admit the existence of an apparent exception here; and it is one object of this discussion to set aside this apparent exception, and to show that all the wants of human nature have been provided for, and that man is placed within the reach of a satisfactory good. All will admit the truth of the principle above stated, in its application to the inferior animals. The known adaptations of the animal organs and instincts to each other and to external nature, form the basis of a most interesting class of deductions from geological phenomena. On this principle, a skillful naturalist is able to deduce from a single bone of an unknown animal the forms and connexions of the other parts, as well as the instincts and habits of the animal to which it belonged. The illustrious Cuvier, by a profound study of natural history, arrived at such a knowledge of the great principles of harmony and adaptation which run through the anatomical structure of animals, that he was able to construct from single bones models of entire skeletons of extinct species; and subsequent discoveries of whole skeletons proved that he had not mistaken the plan of the great Architect of nature. From the organic remains found imbedded in the crust of the earth, geologists have inferred the forms, sizes, habits, and instincts of its primeval inhabitants. Thus they are able to calculate, with some degree of certainty, the states in which our globe has existed in past periods of time, * as well as the changes that have swept over its surface during the lapse of ages. The argument runs thus: "This bone belongs to a skeleton, whose joints admit of a certain range and variety of motions. These motions must have been performed by a corresponding muscular apparatus, and connected with a peculiar organization of the great central organs of life, and of all those parts of the body subservient to them. Such an organization must have destined the animal to a given mode of life, and imposed upon it peculiar instincts and habits. At the time when this animal existed, the earth must have afforded it scope for the exercise of its powers of activity, and yielded it the means of satisfying the cravings of its nature. That is, the earth must have been in a given state at the period when this animal lived. Thus it may be seen how the human mind, starting from so small a hint as a single bone of an extinct animal, presumes to trace back the path of Providence through the lapse of unknown ages, through changes and revolutions too vast for the conception of finite intellects. At first view, the mind is startled at the boldness of such gigantic conclusions from premises apparently 8 SECOND SERIES, VOL. XII. NO. I. so insignificant. But admit that natural history is a sciencethat it is a principle of this science that all the races of animated existences are provided with an ample sphere of activity and enjoyment; and the conclusion is bound to the premises with the very chain of destiny itself. Deny this principle, and you not only invalidate the above deductions from geological phenomena, but you sweep away the foundations of the science of natural history itself. Science is but the expression of the permanent relations and adjustments of nature. But if this principle is not true, there is nothing permanent in the relations of sentient beings. Deny this principle, and the golden chain of being is broken. The boasted harmony and order of nature become wild discord and inextricable confusion. All the generations of past ages, together with existing races, are but the abortions of chance, without meaning in the system of nature, without definite character or fixed relations. Indeed, if this principle be denied, the supposed organic remains found imbedded in the crust of the earth, are no longer any evidence even of the existence of ancient species of animals, now extinct; much less of a former condition of the surface of the earth corresponding to their natures. We might as well adopt the views of some of the earlier opposers of geological speculations, and contend that these supposed bones and shells of animals are only the accidental forms which matter assumed at its original formation; if, indeed, absolute and universal skepticism were not a more rational conclusion from such premises. This principle, then, must stand, or we must cease to talk of the order of nature the harmonious adjustments and consentient relations of universal being. We have dwelt with some detail upon the above illustration, because we wish to present clearly to the mind of the reader the principle which it involves, and because we intend, on this principle, to argue from the nature of man to his relations and destiny, from his moral powers and spiritual wants to his spiritual relations. It may, however, seem superfluous to expend so much labor upon this point, inasmuch as the universal application of the principle at which it aims is admitted, even by those who are most skeptical in matters of religion. Nay, the skeptic himself has eagerly appealed to this very principle, when he has imagined that it would arm him with a weapon of attack against the divine authority of the Bible. In this way an attempt has been made to invalidate the Mosaic account of the |