Nevertheless, though it is as a spiritual being that man is last perfected, it is as a natural being that he first comes in to existence; and his natural faculties, from the lowest to the highest of them, are successively unfolded, before his spiritual ones are opened. Hence the operations of the Divine Spirit, in Genesis, consisted in calling into birth all the lower parts of the creation, beginning from the lowest of all and advancing to the higher, before man himself was produced; all which inferior objects are exact images of the various faculties that belong to the natural part of the human constitution; while that which is called man,—the image and likeness of God, is man considered as to his spiritual part,—a receptacle of love and wisdom from God;—to which it is given to reign over the lower powers. Such was the order in which the Divine Spirit proceeded at first: such then is the order in which the new out-pouring of divine influences might be expected to operate now; and accordingly, such is the order in which it is now working its wonders anew among mankind.
"Hence, then it is that we see, in every direction, such astonishing improvements in whatever has for its object the well-being of man as to the natural part of his constitution. Look at the extraordinary manner in which the science and practice of agriculture have, during the last thirty or forty years, been advanced; which has been such, that although the population of the globe, especially of the Christian part of it, has increased in a ratio beyond all that was ever known before (a circumstance which itself is a most striking result of the increased energy with which life, from the first Source of life, is flowing into nature,) the earth has not proved incapable of supplying food for the increasing multitude, but has poured forth her productions with corresponding profusion; proclaiming the fact, that the divine command requiring her to bring forth her increase,—in other words, the divine energy producing it,—has gone forth anew. Behold, again, the wonderful manner, in which manufacturing skill and power have been augmented;—the astonishing perfection given to machinery; which is such, that wood and metal appear to be informed with human intelligence, whilst they are actuated by a force imparted by inanimate agents immensely beyond any that could be yielded by animal strength. Hereby every production of human ingenuity required for the necessities, comforts, or convenience of man, has been multiplied to an extent which not long since would have been deemed impossible; and so reduced at the same time in price as to be made attainable by all; in which