more discoverable, yet appear often, during long periods of their successive existence, to be unaffected by any noticeable causes of change.

In this ordination of Providence there is evidently great wisdom--great beauty-and a most beneficent accommodation to the nature of man, and to the purposes he has been ordained, as an inhabitant of this world, to promote; the reality and the appearance are thus indeed different-but the appearance is of the two that which is most directly subservient both to the uses and to the comforts of human life--and while it is that which not only makes all nature beauty to the eye of man-but gives him a feeling of security in contemplating the wonderful and mysterious scene on which he exists, it is also, by the very operations in which this perception of the stability of nature engages him, that he is best fitted for contributing,-during his momentary existence, and by the small exertions which he is capable of making-to the progressive movement by which all things are affected.

Taking, however, the human race, in its past history, as one portion of this combined appearance of movement and of repose-there are two aspects under which that history offers itself to our notice. Generally, it is by a comparatively quiet progress that the affairs of the great human family

are carried forward;-long spaces are thus discovered in the past history of our race, during which no movement of any great consequence seems to have been made by them—and though to those who actually lived, during these periods, the tendency not only to change but to great and apparently sudden change, was never entirely concealed,--yet to us, looking back over the course in which the human race has already moved, no traces have been left of such great alterations— nor does the state of the world, posterior to their occurrence, present any appearances which cannot be distinctly traced as a natural sequence, and continued evolution of the previous arrangements.-There are other occasions, however, in which great events seem to have suddenly come forth-and by their influence to have altered the condition, and given a new direction to the destinies of mankind, throughout many subsequent generations. Madame Stael has thus somewhere said, that there are but two ages in the history of the human species,—that which preceded and that which has followed the introduction of Christianity:—but though the remark is so far just, that the alterations, produced by the latter of these, have been greater than those which followed from any other movement of the species we must not limit our consideration to this sim

ple enumeration, but take for granted that there have been other events, though less enduring or remarkable in their operation than the first publication of the Christian faith, which have changed the opinions, or altered the institutions, of great portions of mankind, for a long series of years.

These great changes on the face of human society, however, may have been either for good or for evil;-for though the plan of Providence is upon the whole progressive, it is yet quite consistent with this supposition, that in its subordinate changes, it may be subject to apparently great, though still but temporary retrocessions-just as in the onward course of a mighty river there may be obstructions which have occasionally thrown its eddies into a backward or irregular movement--and which have, upon the whole, retarded its eventual progress to the ocean, though at the sametime the progressive tendency is never entirely checked--but even these temporary aberrations eventually find their way into the onward current of the whole mass of waters.-And besides, the life of man is so short, compared with the progress of the entire scheme amidst which he is stationed, that whatever may be the ultimate progress, he necessarily judges of things by their relation to his own term of observation-and must

thus often witness during, it may be, the greater portion of his life, but an obvious tendency to retrogradation and disorder.

Now, the purpose of the present section is to trace some of the most obvious and remarkable of the laws to which these great changes in human history--whether for good or for evil—are subject ---but simply with a reference to what the past history of mankind has suggested, and with an entire exclusion of any regard to changes which may be apprehended as going on at the present moment. The character of these will be estimated in a subsequent part of this treatise-and whether they be great steps in the onward course of man, or retrocessions to which, in certain periods of society, and under the influence of certain feelings, the general affairs of the world seem to be occasionally subject, we wish all consideration of this question to be kept at present entirely out of view --that, with the calmness and impartiality of men looking back on the long ages of human experience, we may be able to state some of the conditions to which all great alterations in the affairs of men, either for good or for evil, seem to have been subject.

In this investigation, we proceed upon the supposition that there is one vast and connected scheme

everywhere pervading the arrangements of life— and as the very idea of such a scheme renders the supposition of chance or accident altogether inadmissible as a cause of any of the appearances of society-so, on the other hand, there would be obvious presumption in supposing that, with respect to a scheme so boundless in its provisions, the limited understanding and short-sighted experience of man are in a condition fully to account for all the appearances of even any one portion of the stupendous whole. At all times man is a being only "darkly wise”—and it is his very condition in this world, that while he cannot fathom entirely any part of the great work which Divine Wisdom is working around him-he is yet able to obtain glimpses of the order of nature and of life sufficient to shew him that Divine Wisdom and goodness never at any time desert the work in which they are engaged-sufficient also to suggest to him very useful hints for the guidance of his conduct, and the improvement of his institutions and progressively to open up to him still more glorious views of the entire scheme, in proportion as his observations become more extensive, and are conducted with greater nicety and care.— What we aim at, then, in the following observations, is only to suggest such conclusions respect