teaching,
science stops learning. It is true, then, as stated in the outset, that
between the creations and the Creator, science claims to have run no
paths.
The
individuality science perceives is, therefore, that of a world or
universe that has passed through a regular systematic course of
progress, from its early chaos to its completion, under the action of
ordained inorganic forces and laws, and with the institution of the
kingdoms of life through the creation of living species ; the whole
the work of a Being of Infinite Intelligence, whose power has sustained
the forces and laws he ordained, who has guided the earth, it knows not
how, with reference to its being the residence of mind, and whose
connection with man and the universe it leaves among life's mysteries.
Our
argument, based on nature's teachings, has given us reason to believe
that the universe had a beginning, and will have an end; that it has
its limits in space ; that its progress has been a regular progress,
like that of germ-development in its system and epochs, and with only
such decays as were necessarily involved in its progress and the one
final decay ; that, from the beginning to the end, it corresponds to
but one grand cycle of progress, like one progressing individuality
among living species ; that with man it reached the Day of Rest or
Divine Repose, its meridian of life or finished growth, when the
education of mind began. The accordance of this progress with
germ-development, it should be understood, is not in any specific
resemblance in the parts to those of a germ, but an accordance, only,
with the two grand ideas it involves, namely, the general before the special, and the triad of epochs ; and this resemblance exists, because these are the fundamental principles in all progress under system.
If
man goes beyond this study of progress, to specific methods of first
origins of any kind; to the mode of positing creative force; to the
method of germinating a plant-kingdom or an animal kingdom; to notions
of a self-working force in nature .that develops more than self by
reaching to higher and higher grades of results, or to hypotheses about
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