He changed the system of human subsistence, from that of an exuberant garden of spontaneous produce, presenting the most pleasing food to man, without uncertainty or labour, into a course of things analogous to that which we now experience. By this the gratuitous supply of nature, which most nations attach to their golden age, ceased to be the general law of the vegetable kingdom. Sufficient produce for human food was made dependant on human industry. The ground required cultivation, in order to be fertile in the harvests which a multiplying population would need. Where due attention to husbandry was not exerted, thorns and thistles, weeds and vegetation, uneatable, or undesired by mankind, would grow up, instead of the roots and grains that would be deemed most palatable and nutritious. This was the only sentence passed upon Adam, and it was clearly a personal benefit, as well as an admonition

"Say unto them, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, ye! Turn ye from your evil ways. For why will ye die, O house of Israel?"-xxxiii. 11.

-"When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; if the wicked restore the pledge; give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without cornmitting iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done that which is lawful and right: he shall surely live. Yet the children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not equal." -xxxiii. 14-17.

The same principle of the divine administration is again repeated: "When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby. But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby. Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal."-xxxiii. 18-20.

The same just and kind ideas were uttered in another effusion:

"Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways and live?"xviii. 23.

"When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. Because he considereth, and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die."--xviii. 27, 28.

This solemn and benevolent effusion was closed in these impressive repetitions :

"Repent.-Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and five ye."-xviii. 30-2.

and an instrument of moral discipline. The loss of the beauties and of the rich luxuriance of a paradise of nature; the change from the state of a sovereign lord, fed by the bountiful productions streaming around him, inviting him to their ready and abundant banquet, into the condition of a husbandman who must toil for his subsistence, and be dependant on the degree of his own skill, industry, and care, and on the elemental favours; these new circumstances were an unceasing lesson to himself and to his posterity, of the error and folly of not living in obedience to God, and in grateful docility to him. But at the same time this humiliation, and the mortifying remembrances that would be ever arising from it, were highly serviceable to the formation of a moral and nobler character within him. They provided him with an employment for his daily time, and for the activities of his frame and spirit, which is always a pleasure, if it be not immoderate. He was far more certain of becoming a superior being out of Paradise than he could have then been in one. Our present experience satisfies us of this truth. Wherever we find, as in some regions of the tropic zone, that the abundance of nature is so lavish, and the human population in the locality so small, that they have all the effects of a spontaneous produce around them, and have only to pluck and to eat without toil or care; there the human creature is an inferior being; his labour not being necessary to his subsistence, he dislikes all work, and passes his day in the indolence, the sensuality, and the stupidity of the swinish animal, or is only more active to be more mischievous and unhappy. Man, in voluptuous sloth, is a degraded animal, and it is only that industry, those energies, and that inventive activity, which this appointed system of his labour being necessary to his subsistence compels and has created, that have led him to all the arts and manufactures which distinguish civilized life, and to the genius, the talent, and the ennobling qualities and actions by which human nature has ́ been adorned.

The truth is, that the continuity of a paradise of pleasure is not the best first state for the human being, though it will be his fittest and felicitating ulterior one. Man must be first trained and formed under a different system of things, that will call out, and fashion, and exercise all the excellence and improvabilities of his wonderful capacity, into the great moral VOL. II.-T

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 mar, 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 :† 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 ame 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 occupations 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.

"Zillah 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 Natural 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