The earth, and the things of the earth, have been moving forward,
marching on towards perfectability always. Is this forward movement
finished? We have, in looking at the subject in the light of science,
a time when there was not on the earth, in the air, or in the water,
any living thing. We have an era when animal life was but a span
removed from vegetable vitality; we have an era of gigantic vegetable
growth; an era of gigantic but rude animal growth, and so on step by
step down to the advent of man. The previous combinations of animal
life and vegetable life passed away with the era in which they
flourished; one class succeeding another, each emerging from, and
stepping over the annihilation of its predecessor, till we come down
to the present--is there no future progress for this earth as a
planet? Is there to be no other era, where man himself, like the
sauruses, like the mastodon, shall have passed away, to be succeeded
by some nobler animal structure, some loftier intelligence, some more
cunning invention of the infinite mind?
"Man, great in intellect, powerful in mind, gifted with reason, and
having within him a spirit that is immortal, proud, glorious, aspiring
as he is, falls very far short of perfection in every attribute of his
nature. To say, therefore, that the prescience, the creative power of
the Almighty, reached the limit of its achievements in the creation of
man, is to impeach the omnipotence of God himself.
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