What a clog to the intellect is a body governed by gross appetites, and often stopping the ingress of truth, or perverting its aspect, by disordered and imperfect senses! Nearly one third of the time must that intellect sink into oblivion, while sleep recruits the physical powers. And nearly another third of life must be given to the wants of the body; and as we have seen, the great mass of men are obliged to devote nearly their whole time to serve the necessary wants of the body. What an incalculable waste of mind does the world exhibit! And even when all artificial and unnecessary obstructions are taken out of the way, what an immense waste must it always present, while in so gross a corporeal tenement! for were it free to exhibit its true nature, we cannot doubt its power of unwearied and incessant activity. And such might have been its condition here, had it pleased infinite wisdom and benevolence. But what unmixed benevolence would have prompted, perfect wisdom would not permit to fallen man. I feel confident that my first two propositions are established, viz., that there is a predominance of benevolence in the arrangements and operations of the present world, and yet that it is not unmixed benevolence. I advance to a third proposition, which asserts that _the same mixed system of good and evil, which now exists, has always prevailed since the earth was inhabited_. Geology shows us the true succession of events since the first appearance of organic beings on the globe, but no chronological dates are registered on the rocks. And it is only by observing processes in existing nature, analogous to those whose record is engraven on the solid strata, that we can infer that the years since life first appeared on the surface must have been very many. But however far back in the hoary past that event occurred, we have indisputable evidence that the same laws then controlled the operations of nature as now, and the result was the same mixture of good and evil. In the crystalline structure, and in the perfect crystals of the older rocks, we learn the laws which predominated at their production. And we find that the same chemical, electrical, and electro-magnetical influences presided over their formation as are now exhibited in the laboratory of the chemist or the laboratory of nature. Now, these crystals conduct us back much farther than the dawn of terrestrial life, though similar ones, and produced by the same laws, are found through the whole series of rocks, from the oldest to the newest. And I might appeal to many other facts in the earth's history, which demonstrate an identity between the physical laws that have controlled nature's processes in every period of past time.