formed one beneath another; and, among a thousand other instances, it shows completely that the Deity can mould and fashion the parts of material nature so as to fulfill any purpose whatever which He is pleased to appoint.

'They who refer the operations of mind to a substance totally and essentially different from matter-as most certainly these operations, though affected by material causes, hold very little affinity to any properties of matter with which we are acquainted-adopt perhaps a juster reasoning and a better philosophy; and by these the considerations above suggested are not wanted, at least in the same degree. But to such as find, which some persons do find, an insuperable difficulty in shaking off an adherence to those analogies which the corporeal world is continually suggesting to their thoughts to such, I say, every consideration will be a relief which manifests the extent of that intelligent power which is acting in nature, the fruitfulness of its resources, the variety and aptness and success of its means; most especially, every consideration which tends to show that, in the translation of a conscious existence, there is not, even in their own way of regarding it, any thing greatly beyond or totally unlike what takes place in such partsprobably small parts of the order of nature as are accessible to our observation.

Again, if there be those who think that the contractedness and debility of the human faculties in our present state seem ill to accord with the high destinies which the expectations of religion point out to us; I would only ask them, whether any one who saw a child two hours after its birth, could suppose that it would ever come to understand fluxions; or who then shall say, what further amplification of intellectual powers, what accession of knowledge, what advance and improvement, the rational faculty, be its constitution what it will, may not admit of when placed amidst new objects, and endowed with a sensorium adapted, as it undoubtedly will be, and as our present senses are, to the

perception of those substances, and of those properties of things, with which our concern may lie.

'Upon the whole, in every thing which respects this awful, but, as we trust, glorious change, we have a wise and powerful Being-the Author in nature of infinitely various expedients for infinitely various ends-upon Whom to rely for the choice and appointment of means adequate to the execution of any plan which His goodness or His justice may have formed for the moral and accountable part of His terrestrial creation. That great office rests with Him: be it ours to hope and to prepare, under a firm and settled persuasion, that, living and dying, we are His; that life is passed in His constant presence, and that death resigns us to His merciful disposal."

T was

IT

XXIX.

an elegant clear day in the heart of the summer, another year having gone by, that I heard the crackling of brush in the forest, and the next moment Ellen stepped lightly upon the rocks.

"Here is Ellen again," she said, "come to teach the old Pine algebra."

"And the old Pine is delighted," I answered, "for he has always found in algebra much that was dismally obscure and forbidding, but he thinks Ellen will explain this so as to make the unintelligible intelligible, and the obscure plain."

"In all that she attempts Ellen will use the light of common sense," she replied, "refusing to accept the erroneous, although upheld by the ignorance of many. Thus, algebra is based in part upon erroneous assumptions; and to that extent, of course, is a fraud and a lie. Of these the most prominent is that of the signs, that X − and + × + will give +, and + × — and x + will give For signs were not made to be multiplied together, and can not be multiplied together, any further than that one sign could be added to another, making two signs,— possibly two plus or two minus signs, or one plus and one minus sign. Further than this they cannot be multiplied. together any more than they can climb trees. Did the old Pine suppose that numbers had any particular function?"

"Certainly," I said; "their function is to represent quantities