ssigned to
man a comparatively inconsiderable space in the system of the universe.
It regarded him as but a single link in a chain of mutual dependency,--a
chain which would be no longer an entire, but a broken one, were he to
be struck out of it, but as thus more important from his position than
from his nature or his powers. You will remember that one of the
sections of Pope's first epistle to his "good St. John" is avowedly
devoted to show what he terms the "absurdity of man's supposing himself
the final cause of the creation;" and though this great master of
condensed meaning and brilliant point is now less read than he was in
the days of our grandfathers, you will all remember the elegant stanzas
in which he states the usual claims of the species only to ridicule
them. It is human pride personified that he represents as exclaiming,--

"For me kind Nature wakes her genial power,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower,
Annual for me the grape, the rose, renew
The juice nectarious and the balmy dew.
For me the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."

You will further remember how the poet, after thus reducing the claims
and lowering the position of the species, set himself to show that man,
viewed in relation to the place which he occupies, ought not to be
regarded as an imperfect being. Man is, he said, as perfect as he ought
to be. And, such being the case, the Author of all, looking, it would
seem, very little after him, has just left him to take care of himself.
A cold, unfeeling abstraction, like the gods of the old Epicurean, the
Great First Cause of this school is a being

"Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall;
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world."

Such, assuredly, was not that God of the New Testament whom the Saviour
of mankind revealed to his disciples as caring for all his creatures of
the dust, but as caring most for the highest of all. "Are not two
sparrows," he said, "sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall
to the ground without your Father. Fear ye not, therefore; ye are of
more value than many sparrows."

It was the error of this ingenious but very unsolid school, that it
regarded the mere _order_ of the universe as itself an end or final
cause. It reasoned respe