An exalted view and understanding of nature consists, then, in its being contemplated not merely as a dynamical play of reciprocal forces, but historically in its course of development, as a commencing life, perpetually relapsing into death, ever disposed to sleep, and only painfully raising itself, or, rather, raised and lovingly guided through all the intermediate grades into the light. But beneath the huge tombstone of outward nature there sleeps a soul, not wholly alien, but half akin to ourselves--which is distracted between the troubled and painful reminiscence of eternal death, out of which it issued, and the flowers of light which are scattered here and there on this dark earth, as so many lovely suggesters of a heavenly hope. For this earthly nature, as Holy Writ testifies,[24] is, indeed, subject to nullity, yet, without its will, and without its fault: and consequently in hope of Him who has so subjected it, it looks forward in the expectation that it shall one day be free, and have a part in the general resurrection and consummate revelation of God’s glory, before which both nature and death shall stand amazed--and for this last day of a new creation it sighs anxiously, and yearns with the profoundest longing. LECTURE V. OF THE SOUL OF MAN IN RELATION TO GOD. A divine science of nature--one, _i.e._, which is ever looking to and has its root in God, unlike the old heathen physiologies--sees something more in nature than a mere endless play of living forces and the alternations of dynamical action. Contemplating it rather as a whole, and in the connection of its several parts, it traces it from the first foundation on which it was originally raised, up to the final consummation which the Almighty has designed it to attain. Now, to such a mode of studying it, nature appears to be in its beginning, as it were, a bridge thrown across the abyss of eternal death and eternal nothingness. And in perfect agreement with this origin or foundation, it exhibits itself at the outset as a house of corruption, a character which, to a certain degree, it subsequently and long afterward retains. After a while, however, this house of corruption is transformed, by the omnipotence of the good Creator, into a laboratory of new life, and finally is raised into a ladder of resurrection, ascending, or, rather, is made to conduct, step by step, to the highest pitch of earthly glorification, in which nature, too, has a promise that she shall partake. This was the subject of the preceding Lecture, and it naturally enough suggests the further question, whether a similar scale of gradual exaltation exists for the human soul, which, even while it is in many respects akin to mother earth and to nature generally, is, nevertheless, far more excellent, and, by its innate dignity, claims to be regarded as the very head and crown of this earthly creation. The inquiry then, whether the soul of man, gradually rising out of the depths of this