If it be claimed that man is a natural being, originated and sustained by natural laws, that he came without miracle, then do we unite the margins of the human and animal kingdoms, and are satisfied with placing man at the head of the animal world? An interminable and unbroken series of beings extends in a gradual gradation downwards, until the organs by which the phenomena of life are manifested are lost one by one, the senses disappear, until we arrive at what has been aptly termed “protoplasm,” not an organized form, but simply _organizable_ matter, or matter from which organic forms can be produced. If, in reviewing this chain of beings, slowly arising by constant evolution, we closely examine several of its consecutive links, we shall find that while each ascending link is apparently complete, yet it is only the germ out of which the next is evolved in superior forms. Each link is prophecy of future superiority. The fulfillment of one age can be traced until man appears as the last term in the physical series. They who teach this doctrine of evolution, which is to life what the law of gravitation is to worlds, also teach that united with the doctrine of “conservation of force,” the hope of immortality becomes a dream. What a sham they make of creation! What a turmoil for no result! Infinite ages of progress and evolution, during which elemental matter, by force of inherent laws, sought to individualize itself and incarnate its forces in living beings; ages of struggle upwards from low to high, from sensitive to sentient, from sentient to intellectual, from zoöphyte to man! And now, having accomplished this, and given man exquisite susceptibility of thought, of love, of affection; making him the last factor in the series, he is doomed to perish! What is gained by this travail of the ages? Would it not have been as well had the series stopped with the huge saurians of the primeval slime, or the mastodon and mammoth of the pre-historic times, as with the man. As each factor in the series prophecies future forms, so does man read in the same light, prophecy-forms beyond. They can not be in the line of greater physical perfection, for in the days of Greece and Rome, man was as perfect physically, as is seen by their sculptures, as to-day. Ages ago, this exceeding beauty was attained. It cannot be in the evolution of a being superior to man, for as in each lower animal imperfect organs or structures, or partially employed functions, are improvable and perfected by succeeding forms, in man the archetype is complete, and no partially developed organ indicates the possibility of future change. Progress having arrived at its limits with the body, changes its direction, and appears in the advancement of mind. Death closes the career of individuality, and we live only in thoughts--our selfhood is absorbed in the ocean of being. Mankind perfects as a whole, and the sighed-for millenium is coming bye-and-bye.