There are several shades and semblances of this property, for they can hardly be reckoned as distinct properties, which may be worth mentioning: such as repletion aforesaid; which is not growth but a mean to it, and also to the maintenance of its acquisitions, and Assimilation, rather a mode than a part of this property; a temporary growth of one subject by the conversion of another, and that more intimately than in the effect of repletion. But if in this process one subject grows to another, it is rather by giving than by receiving, by giving its likeness to the substance rather than by taking to itself the substance on which it is impressed. In short, the difference between the three last named properties, growth, repletion, and assimilation may be stated in respect hereof as thus, v. g., by growth a subject expands and its dimensions are multiplied, by repletion they are sustained and encouraged, by assimilation the subject rather imparts than receives, but still without any diminution of itself; as a kingdom is not diminished, but rather increased by imparting its citizenship to new subjects.

As for the doctrine of principles, and of their development by growth, maintenance by repletion, and change by assimilation, which seems like being created again, it is passing all human observation. The principles of minute objects, as herbs and insects, would seem to remain suspended in their proper elements, whether of earth, air, or water; which may be considered as their grave or intermediate position. But whether it be so with them, and whether these principles may be old or new; principles that have gone the round of destruction, or never yet been embodied, who can tell? Or some of their subjects having all or nearly the same properties both material, spiritual, and intellectual with ourselves, who can tell, whether we may not have our germinating modes or principles likewise; which, after having existed from the creation, or it may be long before; first alone and then *See note, p. 79.

*

embodied, going next their round of destruction, should latterly remain suspended somewhere like the principles aforesaid awaiting the period of their full appearance or advent? No one perhaps ever heard of such germinating principles in the human kind ever being brought to light by the spade. And the rule, "As I hear I judge" (John v. 30.), will apply in this case perhaps as well as in any. For no man can tell how these things may be one might as well pretend to interpret a dream that one has never heard: "Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will shew the interpretation of it" (Dan. ii. 7). Would the Author of human nature but deign to reveal his counsel or conception respecting this matter to one of us, such a one need not be afraid of divining its consequences; but, as it is, one might be allowed to understand by life the development or exercise of many essential properties, instead of the development of a single principle; ascribing with divine revelation every life and every part in life to the word or counsel of God (Deut. viii. 3), by which all are determined, and brought forward likewise in their determined periods from first to last (Pet. II. iii. 5, &c).

*3, And if one should consider the progressive property of Reproduction, or increase, as a farther continuance of the same development, one should be near the truth perhaps as to the matter or effect, but as far from the cause as ever. Thus, in the vegetable kingdom, we see young plants spring up, grow to maturity, and continue in the same, as they are not all like ourselves. "For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass, (so unlike his original!) The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURETH FOR EVER” (Pet. I. i. 24); and some plants of the ligneous sort will also endure for many of our generations. By the same process, seemingly, by which they grow and their blossoms expand with only one property superadded, they will likewise produce, it may be both seeds and effects to make fresh plants, and also reproduce by their means

from the effect of one act, creation kept up or continued. Farther than this, their author only knows, or can know perhaps the beginning of this increase; at all events, it is more than a man can modestly pretend to penetrate. And with regard to a notion that some have of the material form of every animal and every vegetable, individually, that ever has been, or shall be, having existed in the first of the kind; it is, what there seems no more reason for supposing, than for supposing a material First Cause, to give these material forms a suitable beginning; or for supposing any other medium besides the simple fiat, mode, or prescription of the Deity, beginning after the manner intimated in Genesis, and still continuing agreeably to the forecited text of St. Peter.

It would seem indeed, as if the fiat of reproduction and increase (Gen. i. 28), was subsequent to that of creation (Ib. 26), by its being directed to living creatures; but on the same ground a similar succession might as well be ascribed to the fiat of repletion, which were evidently superfluous. And the fairest construction upon the whole is, that of one eternal, ever-operating fiat; being, as they say, One word for all: no property, form, nor combination having essentially any other origin, at any distance of time or production; nor any thing appearing in the present state, "whereof it may be said, see this is new" (Eccl. i. 10). For "it hath been already of old time" in cause or necessity; and necessity itself even in moral action is older than the creation; being, in this respect at least, a latent property until it was excited by the abuse of freedom; as the thing that we are considering was also a latent property at first-the latent, spiritual motive, property of reproduction, being then combined with others and serving to their renewal on occasion, as any one property, whether physical or moral, might serve to the renewal of another. So breath assists repletion; repletion, growth, &c., in one department: and so in the other "tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experi

ence, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us" (Rom. v. 3, 4, 5). *

*4: 5, The last mentioned property, therefore, may deserve to rank high on account of its extensive influence. And low, as this partial motive sort of properties may seem to stand generally in the composition of the subject, it still is not destitute of some that seem highly refined, having even a shadow of intellect among them. Of this, Sleeping is an example, from its concomitant, though very unequal properties, Dreaming and Waking, which being so unequal, may be thought ill sorted in a joint consideration with that, but so they come to most men in effect, and so they have need to be mentioned.

Sleep has often been termed the image of death, and its consequent properties, dreaming and waking, may also be images for aught that is known, though not very precise, of similar properties consequent upon death. Perhaps, there may be in either case a wandering of the more active properties with a consequent latency of others, similar to the case of a chariot with the horses detached and run away from it. In a waking absence of mind too, we have the same simili

It may not here be amiss to anticipate a difficulty respecting princi ples in transitú, and their heterogeneous productions.

The notion of an incorporeal beginning for a corporeal nature or substance may seem a paradox to those whose second thoughts have not begun to prevail over the material preconceptions that we all naturally imbibe as soon as we begin to see and feel; but a little farther reflexion may suffice to teach them, that a subject composed, like man, of both a corporeal and incorporeal nature or substance cannot require a material more than an immaterial beginning, since the accumulation and reproduction of flesh and blood by spirit or intellect would seem as natural as the accumulation and reproduction of views, passions and propensities by matter. And if we only once suppose such a beginning as the first named spiritual or intellectual, it will not be very hard to mount up therefrom, even by our unaided reason, not only to the idea of an endless production, by one word given as above stated, through congenial sensations and conceptions; but occasionally also of an immediate production solely by the Divine Word, like those mentioned by St. John, “which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 13),

tude of wandering; it is, indeed, like sleeping upright in the manner of a quadruped; but not so much like death as sleep the whole mass or accumulation of properties being here prostrated as it were by a charm; the visible man, pinioned and fettered invisibly with shackles stronger than iron, and stretched forth like a senseless corpse to appearance; all outward motion, whether partial or universal, apparently suspended; all intercourse with the world and its affairs broken up; and all knowledge of the same, with every thought of it, except in short intervals of dreaming, which are more frantic than lucid, vanished, until the grand process of waking shall restore to us our locomotive properties, as well as our sensitive, the intellectual being already up and abroad.

Dreaming is in substance half-waking, and our dreams are more or less lively, as we are more or less awake. It may, therefore, be hard to define the exact bounds between sleeping and waking. Consciousness appears to be something of a criterion; but will not always answer, because we are often conscious, in a certain degree, of what passes both within us and without at times when we are the least likely to be awake. This may be mentioned as a remarkable exception, though too intellectual to be here insisted on. In other cases too, dreaming may be interesting, as connected with the physiology of the mind, though not in general as connected with future events. For it proves most clearly by its different shades a distinction of properties in the human intellect; some sleeping, while others are awake in both cases: while the awaking of all these properties in rapid succession from sleep, leaves no room to doubt a similar recovery, and that with improvement from death, out of any degree of madness or derangement, at the last general resurrection. The action or internal motion of the kingdom will then be unrestrained, and the prelude to as great a freedom of the external, being the second species which was to be considered under the head of Operation; and which many other interesting species of

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