er of law.
And the laws of Nature never vary; in their application they never
hesitate nor are wanting.

[Sidenote: And yet there is free-will for man.]

But in thus ascending to primordial laws, and asserting their
immutability, universality, and paramount control in the government of
this world, there is nothing inconsistent with the free action of man.
The appearance of things depends altogether on the point of view we
occupy. He who is immersed in the turmoil of a crowded city sees nothing
but the acts of men, and, if he formed his opinion from his experience
alone, must conclude that the course of events altogether depends on the
uncertainties of human volition. But he who ascends to a sufficient
elevation loses sight of the passing conflicts, and no longer hears the
contentions. He discovers that the importance of individual action is
diminishing, as the panorama beneath him is extending. And if he could
attain to the truly philosophical, the general point of view,
disengaging himself front all terrestrial influences and entanglements,
rising high enough to see the whole globe at a glance, his acutest
vision would fail to discover the slightest indication of man, his
free-will, or his works. In her resistless, onward sweep, in the
clock-like precision of her daily and nightly revolution, in the
well-known pictured forms of her continents and seas, now no longer dark
and doubtful, but shedding forth a planetary light, well might he ask
what had become of all the aspirations and anxieties, the pleasures and
agony of life. As the voluntary vanished from his sight, and the
irresistible remained, and each moment became more and more distinct,
well might he incline to disbelieve his own experience, and to question
whether the seat of so much undying glory could be the place of so much
human uncertainty, whether beneath the vastness, energy, and immutable
course of a moving world, there lay concealed the feebleness and
imbecility of man. Yet it is none the less true that these contradictory
conditions co-exist--Free-will and Fate, Uncertainty and Destiny, It is
only the point of view that has changed, but on that how much has
depended! A little nearer we gather the successive ascertainments of
human inquiry, a little further off we realize the panoramic vision of
the Deity. A Hindu philosopher has truly remarked, that he who stands by
the banks of a flowing stream sees, in their order, the various parts as
they success