And in another passage, quoted by Professor Hitchcock: “That death which God threatened to Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. If he had stayed in innocence, he should have gone placidly and fairly, without vexatious and affective circumstances; he should not have died by sickness, defect, misfortune, or unwillingness.” These sentiments Archdeacon Pratt[68] quotes, not as necessarily approving them, but to show that so good and learned a man as Jeremy Taylor had a view regarding death and mortality no less unusual than that which Geology demands. --------------------- Footnote 68: _Science and Scripture not at Variance_, 2d ed. 1858. ---------------------------- FUTURE EARTHLY EXISTENCE OF THE HUMAN RACE. Regarding Man, independently of any revealed knowledge of his future destiny, but simply with reference to his relations with the physical world about him, Mr. Hopkins, the able geologist, asks: “Do we see in his character and position here any indication that this earth is his destined abiding place for indefinite periods of time? We conceive that a negative answer to the question is suggested at least by the fact that the extent of the earth’s surface and its powers of production are _finite_, whereas the tendency in human population to increase is unlimited. It is undoubtedly easy to conceive this tendency to be arrested, but not probably by causes consistent with the moral and physical well-being of the race. Whether human population may have increased or not during the last two thousand years, is a matter of little import, we conceive, to the question before us. We know that it is now spreading itself over many parts of the globe, under influences far different from those under which it has heretofore extended,—the influence of Christianity, and of that higher civilisation which must attend the pure doctrines of our religion. We believe that this extension and increase of the civilised races of mankind will continue; and, however it may be temporarily checked by the hardships and evils to which man is subject, we can hardly understand how this tendency can be effectively and finally arrested before the population of the globe shall have approximated to that limit which must be necessarily imposed upon it by the finite dimensions of man’s dwelling-place. We know not what might be the views of political economists on this ultimate condition of human population; but we feel it difficult to conceive its existence, under merely human influences, independently of physical want, and possibly of that moral debasement which so frequently attends it. In fact, those who regard man simply in his human character and in his relations to _nature_, and not in his relations to God, must find in his earthly future the most insoluble problem which can offer itself to the speculative philosopher.