, and oil
that maketh his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's
heart." But it is in a greatly higher sense, and in reference to God's
moral laws, that he is fitted to be his fellow-worker in the Scriptural
sense. And his proper employment in this department is the elevation and
development, moral and intellectual, of himself and his fellow-men, both
in adaptation to the demands of the present time, and in preparation for
a future state.

All experience, however, serves to show that in this paramount
department man greatly fails; nay, that he is infinitely less true to
his proper end and destiny than the beasts that perish to their several
instincts. And yet it may be remarked, that such of the lower animals as
are guided by pure instinct are greatly more infallible within their
proper spheres than the higher, half-reasoning animals. The mathematical
bee never constructs a false angle; the sagacious dog is not
unfrequently _out_ in his calculations. The higher the animal in the
scale, the greater its liability to error. But it is not the less true,
that no fish, no reptile, no mammal, of the geologic or the recent ages,
ever so failed in working out the purposes it was created to serve, as
man has failed in working out _his_; further, in no creature save in man
does there exist that war of the mind between appetite and duty of which
the Apostle so consciously complained. And we must seek an explanation
of these twin facts in that original freedom of the will which, while it
rendered man capable of being _of choice_ God's fellow-worker, also
conferred on him an ability of choosing _not_ to work with God. And his
choice of not working with him, or of working against him, being once
freely made, we may see how, from man's very constitution and nature, as
an intelligence united to matter that increases his kind from generation
to generation in virtue of the original law, the ability of again
working with God might be forever destroyed. And thus man's general
condition as a lapsed creature may be as unequivocally a consequence of
man's own act, as the condition of individuals born free, but doomed to
slavery in punishment of their offences, is a consequence of _their_ own
acts. A brief survey of the many-colored and variously-placed human
family, as at present distributed on the earth, may enable us in some
degree to conceive of a matter which, involving, as it does, that master
problem of moral science, the ori