its living
inhabitants from harm.

Wesley tells us farther, that before the sin of Adam, "The air was
always serene and always friendly to man." Now the air is still always
_friendly to man_. Even when it comes in the form of hurricanes and
tempests, it is so. It is doing work, even then, _good work_, which
gentle breezes are _unable_ to do. It is carrying away dangers which
gentler currents of air would not have the power to carry away. And even
when they cause destruction in their course, they are still performing
friendly offices to man. They are inspiring him with a livelier
consciousness of his absolute dependence upon God, and of the folly of
resisting His will. They are exercising his intellectual powers, by
leading him to devise means for his protection from their fury, and
obliging him also to exert his bodily powers in carrying out the devices
of his intellect. They are, in fact, contributing to make him a wiser, a
stronger, a better, a happier, and in all respects, a completer, and a
diviner being than he otherwise would be. We agree therefore with Wesley
that the air before Adam sinned was always _friendly to man_; but we do
not agree with him in his notions as to what _constituted_ its
friendliness; nor do we agree with him in the notion, that since the
sin of Adam the air has _ceased_ to be friendly, or even proved to be
_less_ friendly, to man. We believe that the air is as friendly to man
now as it ever was,--that it does him as little mischief, that it
contributes as much to his well-being and comfort, as it ever did.

Wesley further says, the sun was situated at the most exact distance
from the earth, so as to yield a sufficient quantity of heat, neither
too little nor too much, to every part of it. Ho further intimates that
there was at first no inclination of the earth's axis, and that the
seasons and the degree of heat and cold were, in consequence, the same
all the world over, and all the year round. All these statements seem
erroneous in the extreme. The supply of heat to the different parts of
the earth does not depend altogether on the distance of the sun from the
earth, as Wesley intimates, but on the motions of the earth around the
sun and upon its own axis. Wesley seems to imagine that if the axis of
the earth were not inclined, or elevated at one end, the earth would
receive from the sun the same quantity of heat through every part;
whereas nothing could be farther from the truth. If, as We