In the first place; in what degree, according to our conceptions, could the mineral substances which have been specified be necessary or useful to men in such a state of innocence, happiness, and favour?

In any case not involving a palpable contradiction, it would be rash totally to deny unknown possibilities. It may be within the range of possibilities, and it might be within the appointments of the good pleasure of the Deity, that coal, and iron, and copper, and the other metals, should be made in some mode subservient to the benefit I even of such beings. It does not, however, seem too much humbly to observe, that, according to the measure of human understanding, the necessity, or the important utility, of such substances to such beings is not easily, if at all, to be discerned. Were men dwelling in a Paradisiacal state, or amid the realisation of an age of gold, = when neither corporeal need nor mental feeling would prompt a wish for clothing; when the grove, though shelter were superfluous, would ever be at hand with its grateful vicissitude of shade; when trees loaded with fruit, and herbs of grateful taste, were spreading their offerings

in spontaneous luxuriance to meet the first sensations of hunger or of thirst; when all was purity, and peace, and joy: on what obvious grounds could we rest the applicability and the importance of the substances under consideration ?These observations are sustained by their accordance with the Mosaic records; in which the application of the metals to the ordinary purposes of man is assigned to a period far subsequent to the expulsion of our first parents from Paradise. Among the inventors of early arts and modes of life, Tubal-cain, the sixth in regular descent from Cain, is described as the first instructor of every artificer in brass (copper) and iron*.

But, in the second place, if it be assumed that the possession of coal, and of iron, and of the rest of the metals would be not only in a moderate degree desirable, but even of essential advantage, to man in the supposed condition of innocence and felicity, and in the consequent continuance of the favour of the gracious Father of Creation: is it possible to suppose that those

* Genesis, iv, 22.

substances would be placed in the situations in which they are now arranged, and under the circumstances and forms in which, at present, they are commonly enveloped?

To answer this question affirmatively appears beyond the possibilities of reason. Consider, that the beds of coal and the metallic veins are deeply stationed below the surface of the earth; that they are buried under strata of powerful resistance; that by the convulsions through which these strata have been disjoined and dislocated the accompanying coal and metal participate in every mode of confusion; and that by the combination of all these circumstances, they are rendered at once of doubtful discovery and of difficult access. Consider farther, that the metallic bodies, when discovered and obtained, are rarely in a state fitting them for the service of man. They offer themselves to him in masses of shapeless, rugged, stony, and intractable ore; and are to be subdued by the strongest discipline of fire and of labour ere they will submit to the forms, and manifest the qualities, which are indispensably necessary, before he can derive a particle of benefit from his acquisition. Is it conceivable that

men, innocent, happy in the full enjoyment of the paternal favour of God, men dwelling in an actual or a virtual Paradise, should be doomed by their Heavenly Father to seek the mineral production which we are supposing them to need, in such a situation, and to find it in such a state? Is it conceivable that they should be appointed to delve in subterranean darkness, amidst water and mire, amidst the suffocations of mephitic air, and the explosions of fire-damps? Is it conceivable that like the criminals of ancient Rome, or the enslaved Indians of Spanish America, they should be thus "damnati ad metalla," condemned to the mines? Is it conceivable, that when they had at length brought up their prize to the light of day, when they began to examine its aspect and its properties, they should discover it to be in a state wholly unprofitable; and that the toils of the furnace and of the forge, and of many subsidiary operations, were yet required to bring it into the shape, and the texture, and the temper, essential to practical usefulness? Assuredly we may without hesitation conclude, that, if to innocent and favoured man minerals were of importance, they would be provided for him by

of

Divine goodness in stations easy of detection and of access, and would be endued with the qualities necessary for his purpose.

Now reverse the view. Regard man through the medium of the light already supplied by Natural Theology, as a fallen creature; and every particular which has appeared strange, jarring, or impossible, when connected with the supposition of his innocence, takes its appropriate place, and displays its fitness and consistency, in relation to beings who have lost their original righteousness. If, for man in his present condition, there be a substance over which power is specially important; that substance is iron. It is the possession of iron which constitutes, humanly speaking, the = difference between savage life and civil society. Its value is instantly discerned, even when the eye is but half opening, and the mind but half awakening, from the night and torpor of barbarism. When a ship, on a voyage of discovery, touches at a new island; what, among the productions of an unknown hemisphere laid before the wondering native, are speedily the objects of his most intense solicitude? A hatchet, an adze, a nail; a piece of broken iron, of which he knows