suggestions from analogy, with trains of thought and belief, which have their proper nutriment from other quarters. We know, even from the evidence of natural science, that God has interposed in the history of this Earth, in order to place Man pon it. In that case, there was a clear, and, in the strongest sense of the term, a supernatural interposition of the Divine Creative Power. God interposed to place upon the earth, Man, the social and rational being. God thus directly instituted Human Society; gave man his privileges and his prospects in such society; placed him far above the previously existing creation; and endowed him with the means of an elevation of nature entirely unlike anything which had previously appeared. Would it then be a violation of analogy, if God were to interpose again, to institute a Divine Society, such as we have attempted to describe; to give to its members their privileges; to assure to them their prospects; to supply to them his aid in pursuing the objects of such a union with each other; and thus, to draw them, as they aspire to be drawn, to a spiritual union with Him? It would seem that those who believe, as the records of the earth's history seem to show, that the establishment of Man, and of Human Society, or of the germ of human society, upon the earth, was an interposition of Creative Power beyond the ordinary course of nature; may also readily believe that another supernatural Interposition of Divine Power might take place, in order to plant upon the earth the Germ of a more Divine Society; and to introduce a period in which the earth should be tenanted by a more excellent creature than at present. 21. But though we may thus prepare ourselves to assent to the possibility, or even probability, of such a Divine Interposition, exercised for the purpose of establishing upon earth a Divine Society: it would be a rash and unauthorized step,— especially taking into account the vast differences between material and spiritual things,—to assume that such an Interposition would have any resemblance to the commencement of a New Period in the earth's history, analogous to the Periods by which that history has already been marked. What the manner and the operation of such a Divine Interposition would be, Philosophy would attempt in vain to conjecture. It is conceivable that such an event should produce its effect, not at once, by a general and simultaneous change in the aspect of terrestrial things, but gradually, by an almost imperceptible progression. It is possible also that there may be such an Interposition, which is only one step in the Divine Plan;-a preparation for some other subsequent Interposition, by which the change in the Earth's inhabitants is to be consummated. Or it is possible that such a Divine Interposition in the history of man, as we have hinted at, may be a preparation, not for a new form of terrestrial life, but for a new form of human life;— not for a new peopling of the Earth, but for a new existence of Man. These possibilities are so vague and doubtful, so far as any scientific analogies lead, that it would be most unwise to attempt to claim for them any value, as points in which Science supplies support to Religion. Those persons who most deely feel the value of religion, and are most strongly convinced of its truths, will be the most willing to declare, that religious belief is, and ought to be, independent of any such support, and must be, and may be, firmly established on its own proper basis. 22. We find no encouragement, then, for any attempt to obtain, from Science, by the light of the analogy of the past, any definite view of a future condition of the Creation. And that this is so, we cannot, for reasons which have been given, feel any surprise. Yet the reasonings which we have, in various parts of this Essay, pursued, will not have been without profit, even in their influence upon our religious thoughts, if they have left upon our minds these convictions :-That if the analogy of science proves anything, it proves that the Creator of man can make a Creator as far superior to Man, as Man, when most intellectual, moral, religious, and spiritual, is superior to the brutes :—and again, That Man's Intellect is of a divine, and therefore of an immortal nature. Those persons who can, on any basis of belief, combine these two convictions, so as to feel that they have a personal interest in both of them; -those who have such grounds as Religion, happily appealed to, can furnish, for hoping that their imperishable element may, hereafter, be clothed with a new and more glorious apparel by the hand of its Almighty Maker;—may be well content to acknowledge that Science and Philosophy could not give them this combined conviction, in any manner in which it could minister that consolation, and that trust in the Divine Power and Goodness, which human nature, in its present condition, requires. |