than the creator also of those visual organs, without which the faculties could have no operation and no existence? As clearly as light and the eye are the work of the same author, so clearly also do our capacities for the most exalted visual pleasures, and the feelings flowing from them, proceed from the same Divine Hand. 3. The creator of the earth must be conceived to be the author also of all those qualities in the soil, chemical and whatever else, by which it supports vegetable life, under all the modifications of natural and artificial condition. Among the attributes which the earth thus possesses, there are some which seem to have an especial reference to man in a state of society. Such are--the power of the earth to increase its produce under the influence of cultivation, and the necessary existence of property in land, in order that this cultivation may be advantageously applied; the rise, under such circumstances, of a _surplus_ produce, of a quantity of subsistence exceeding the wants of the cultivators alone; and the consequent possibility of inequalities of rank, and of all the arrangements of civil society. These are all parts of the constitution of the earth. But these would all remain mere idle possibilities, if the nature of man had not a corresponding direction. If man had not a social and economical tendency, a disposition to congregate and co-operate, to distribute possessions and offices among the members of the community, to make and obey and enforce laws, the earth would in vain be ready to respond to the care of the husbandman. Must we not then suppose that this attribute of the earth was bestowed upon it by Him who gave to man those corresponding attributes, through which the apparent niggardliness of the soil is the source of general comfort and security, of polity and law? Must we not suppose that He who created the soil also inspired man with those social desires and feelings which produce cities and states, laws and institutions, arts and civilization; and that thus the apparently inert mass of earth is a part of the same scheme as those faculties and powers with which man’s moral and intellectual progress is most connected?