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LETTER XXII.

The first state and residence of the human beings created-the beginning of language-the fall of man-corruption and vices of the general population-its universal destruction by a deluge.

THE Deity having formed his human being, and stationed him in a pleasant region of the earth, watered by a river, and where he caused the riches of the vegetable kingdom to grow; in this selected locality-the garden of Eden-a paradise of natural beauty and delight-he introduced to Adam the Eve that was to share his kindest affections, and to form his chief earthly happiness. He began the intellectual education of his rational creature, by causing the various classes of the animal kingdom to approach him, that he might observe their qualities, and from these attach to them the verbal sounds or names by which he would afterwards know and distinguish them. This incident implies that Adam was also taught to put his provided organs of speech into their appropriate action, and to modulate his breath into varied articulations of audible voice. Language thus began with the names of living things. The first

words were the notations of existing substances-the true foundation of all human speech. From the sensations and names of actual things, the mind proceeds to their qualities and motions; and then ascends to the higher operations of marking its own feelings and emotions; of communicating its ideas and affections to fellow-beings, and of knowing and understanding them. Thus language arises and expands. It began in paradise, from natural realities, and has been enlarging ever since, as the knowledge, thoughts, sensibilities and reasoning of the human race have multiplied in their various societies and in each individual soul.

We now approach the great mystery of our creation, the fall and sin of man: his loss of primeval happiness, with the departure of primeval rectitude; the commencement of moral evil, and of personal suffering from that and from natural agencies; the introduction of pain; the deterioration of human nature; the defection of man from his Creator; the assertion of human independence; the rejection of all other control; the reign of self-will; the refusal of selfgovernment; the preference of self-indulgence to self

restraint; the dislike of a moral superior, and of a commanding legislator; the alienation of the human heart from its God, and the persevering tendency of the human mind to obey no invisible Lord; the devotion of the spirit to its present enjoyments, and a disregard of future consequences; a carelessness of inevitable death, and an indifference or dislike to a future state of existence beyond it: Whatever opinion we may form as to the original causes of these errors and mischiefs, the fact of their occurrence, prevalence, and continuance, is indisputable. They appear promi nently in every page of human history-in the characters and conduct of all ages and nations-in the daily habits and transactions of all existing society-in our own individual hearts and lives. Such a being, man has been ever since his primeval and paradisiacal day—such he perseveres to be: and yet a very small use of our reasoning faculties cannot fail to satisfy every candid mind, which covets only the right of judgment and the unprejudiced truth, that_in such perversity as this he could not have been created. To be such a mutilation of that divine likeness which he was destined to wear and appointed to acquire, cannot have been pleasing to the Great Perfection, whom he was to resemble. It is a counteraction to his purposes, and a frustration to his design-it is the temporary defeat of his gracious purposes in our existence-it is the present triumph of what is most hostile to him-it is indeed the result, which, as our Milton has sung, has

"Brought death into the world, and all our wo."

But into the primitive history of this catastrophe, and into the philosophical considerations that will arise as we meditate upon it, I will not at present enter, for two dissuading reasons: the first-that to do justice to the momentous subject, would require a longer space than the limits which 1 have assigned to the present letters will allow and the second, and not the least influential motive also, is, that it cannot be contemplated, so fitly and so extensively as it ought to be, to be rightly comprehended and appreciated, without some reference to the course of things and history of mankind after the deluge.

From this period our present course and condition of natural and moral evils more immediately flow. They are what they are now, under the system of nature and altered constitution and position of mankind, since the

revival and reproduction of our species, subsequent to that desolating catastrophe. Our present vices and follies are more connected with our present state of being, than with the primeval formation or paradisiacal location of our first erring ancestor. I will therefore defer that representation, and those reflections which may assist your maturing mind to think and feel justly and fairly about events and changes that we must all lament, and desire earnestly to remedyuntil I find sufficient opportunity and ability to lay them before you, as I should wish to present them to you. It will, on this plan, be only necessary to allude now to the calamitous results.

With these you are familiar. The dislocation, from a condition of unmingled happiness, into the common world, where labour, trouble, and sorrow were appointed to accompany moral delinquency, as they do at this day-the destruction of one brother by the envy, resentment, or morose caprice of another-the separation of the increasing population into two grand divisions of society-the better and the bad-till the progress of time brought them into intercourse with each other, when all became contaminated with the spirit and habit of common violence and immorality-these were the unhappy effects of the primitive departure from reason and obedience; and the depravation became so 'universal and so irremediable under that constitution of nature and of man, which had been created for a grand scale of his existence and felicity, that the Sovereign Lord and superintending benefactor thought it fittest for the welfare of all succeeding races, that the corrupt population which were then disgracing and spoiling human nature, should be suddenly extinguished. A deluge was the appointed visitation to accomplish this change: and no general mode of destruction could be less painful or more instantaneously effective, or present more durable monuments of its cause and operations. From this catastrophe, one family was excepted, and preserved in an artificial fabric built by them for that purpose, as commanded, on a premonition of the intended calamity.

In this ark of safety, such of the animal world as were intended to replace the genera that would perish, also found a shelter. And when these provisions for repeopling the earth with its animated races, in the new state and course of things that were ordained to succeed this calamity, were completed, the tremendous revolution occurred.

"The

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fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened."* From above and below, the waters gathered upon the surface and multiplied upon it, and rolled terrifically over it, till they covered the high hills, and destroyed the offending generation and every substance that was then existing with the principle of life upon the habitable ground. We can but faintly conceive the appalling scene. Mankind were surprised, in the midst of their usual festivities and employments, by the sudden alarm of portentous danger rapidly rushing on them from the blackening and howling sky. The sun was seen no more-midnight darkness usurped the day-lightnings dreadfully illuminated-thunder rolled with increas ing fury-all that was natural, ceased; and in its stead, whirlwind and desolation-earth rending-cities fallingthe roar of tumultuous waters-shrieks and groans of human despair-overwhelming ruin-universal silence!and the awful quiet of executed and subsiding retribution!

THE END.

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