s the subjection of the human race
to physical death a part of the Creator's original plan, or the
retributive result of a subsequent dislocation of that plan by
sin? a part of the great harmony of nature, or a discord marring
the happy destiny

1 Harris, The Pre Adamite Earth.

2 Agassiz says no higher creature than man is to be expected on
earth, because the capacities of the earthly plan of organic
creation are completed and exhausted with him. Introduction to
Study of Natural History, p. 57.

of man? Approaching this problem on grounds of science and reason
alone, there can be no hesitation as to the reply. There are but
two considerations really bearing upon the point and throwing
light upon it; and they both force us to the same conclusion.
First, it is a fact admitting no denial that death was the
predetermined natural fate of the successive generations of the
races that preceded man. Now, what conceivable reason is there for
supposing that man, constructed from the same elements, living
under the same organic laws, was exempt from the same doom? There
is not in the whole realm of science a single hint to that effect.
Secondly, the reproductive element an essential feature in the
human constitution, leading our kind to multiply and replenish the
earth is a demonstration that the office of death entered into
God's original plan of the world. For otherwise the earth at this
moment could not hold a tithe of the inhabitants that would be
demanding room. When God had permitted this world to roll in space
for awful ages, a lifeless globe of gas, fire, water, earth, and
then let it be occupied for incommensurable epochs more by snails,
vermin, and iguanodons, would he wind up the whole scene and
destroy it when the race of man, crowning glory of all, had only
flourished for a petty two thousand years? It is not credible. And
yet it must have been so unless it was decreed that the successive
generations should pass away and thus leave space for, the new
comers. We conclude, then, that it is the will of God and was in
the beginning that the human race shall possess the earth through
all the unknown periods of the future, the parents continually
passing off the stage in death as the children rise upon it to
maturity. We cannot discern any authority in those old traditions
which foretell the impending destruction of the world. On what
grounds are we to believe them? The great system of things is a
stable harmony. Th