em durable and eternal
in their strength, like mankind carry within themselves the seeds of
their own dissolution.

Yet the day will come when man, by the aid of science, will, through
these premonitory symptoms, foresee the coming events, even as the wise
physician can discern the time when his patient's soul will leave its
body.

Nature misunderstood is a fearful mystery; but understood, she is a
simple and beautiful piece of mechanism; and the earthquake may not be
more disastrous than the flood or the avalanche when science and
experience have taught men to avoid the localities of danger, and to
watch the hour of its approach, that they may flee before it.

Nature is never abrupt in her actions. She heralds her intentions long
before she enacts them, but as it requires the quick ear of the
savage--the child of nature--to detect the far-off prey, so it requires
the student of nature to discover the distant tread of the earthquake.

SIR DAVID BREWSTER

_NATURALNESS OF SPIRIT LIFE_.

The human mind is subject to false and specious reasoning, and time after
time opinions which have been held and argued upon with seeming logical
acumen, have, by further developments and discoveries, been proven
fallacious. And yet of so elastic a nature is the mind of man that he is
not crushed nor discouraged by his mistakes, but immediately commences to
build new theories; but as he establishes them by specialties instead of
generalities, he is again defeated.

The European mind has adopted a certain line of thought respecting the
future state of existence, which it substantiates by narrow reasonings
and isolated facts.

Of the future we can only judge by analogy of the past with the present.

Nature ever shadows forth her new developments upon the old.

The many periods or stages through which the earth has passed in reaching
her present state of refinement, have been stamped one upon the other so
that the Geologist can determine definitely what would be the result of a
certain period from the characteristics of the foregoing.

Now it is educible: if the Creator of the race of men who inhabit the
terrestrial globe had intended for them a future state or destination
differing in every respect from their present one, he would have prepared
their minds for different pursuits, and ordained them for other
occupations than those they follow to the very grave.

Take man in his most natural condition--examine those natio