Regarded in an historical point of view, man was created free--there lay two paths before him--he had to choose between the one, conducting to the realms above, and the other, leading to the regions below;--and thus at least he was endowed with the faculty of two different wills. Had he remained steadfast in his first will--that pure emanation of the deity--had he remained true to the word which God had communicated to him--he would have had but one will. He would, however, have still been free; but his freedom would have resembled that of the heavenly spirits, whom we must not imagine to be devoid of freedom because they are no longer in a state of trial, and can never be separated from God. We should, besides, greatly err, if we figured to ourselves the Paradisaic state of the first man as one of happy indolence; for, in truth, it was far otherwise designed, and it is clearly and expressly said that our first parent was placed in the garden of the earth to guard and to cultivate it. "To guard," because an enemy was to be at hand, against whom it behoved to watch and to contend. "To cultivate," possibly in a very different manner, yet still with labour, though, doubtless, a labour blessed with far richer and more abundant recompense than afterwards when, on man's account, the earth was charged with malediction. This first divine law of nature, if we may so speak, by virtue of which labour and struggle became from the beginning the destiny of man, has retained its full force through all succeeding ages, and is applicable alike to every class, and every nation, to each individual as well as to mankind in general, to the most important, as to the most insignificant, relations of society. He who weakly shrinks from the struggle, who will offer no resistance, who will endure no labour nor fatigue, can neither fulfil his own vocation, whatever it be, nor contribute aught to the general welfare of mankind.--But since man hath been the prey of discord, two different wills have contended within him for the mastery--a divine and a natural will. Even his freedom is no longer that happy freedom of celestial peace--the freedom of one who hath conquered and triumphed--but a freedom, as we now see it--the freedom of undetermined choice--of arduous, still undecided, struggle. To return to the divine will, or the one conformable to God--to restore harmony between the natural and the divine will, and to convert and transform more and more the lower, earthly and natural will into the higher, and divine one, is the great task of mankind in general, as of each individual in particular. And this return--this restoration--this transformation--all the endeavours after such--the progress or retrogressions in this path--constitute an essential part of universal history, so far as this embraces the moral development and intellectual march of humanity.--But the fact that man, so soon as he loses the internal sheet-anchor of truth and life--so soon as he abandons the