Every thing acts according to the ability it possesses. Man, possessed of reason, devises means and produces ends. Beasts change locations, devour vegetables, and sometimes other beasts. The lowest grade of animals never change location, but yet eat and live. Vegetables live and grow, but do not change location. They have the power to reproduce their species, and some of them to kill off surrounding objects. "The carraguata of the West Indies, clings round," says Goldsmith, "whatever tree it happens to approach; there it quickly gains the ascendant, and, loading the tree with a verdure not its own, keeps away that nourishment designed to feed the trunk, and at last entirely destroys its supporter." In our country, many gardens and fields present convincing proof of the ability of weeds to kill out the vegetables designed to grow therein. You all have heard of the Upas, which has a power sufficient to destroy the lives of animals and vegetables for a large distance around. Its very exhalations are death to whatever approaches it. It serves in metaphor to illustrate the noxious effects of all vice, of slander and deceit, the effects of which are to the moral constitution, what the tree itself is to natural objects, blight and mildew upon whatever comes within its reach.
Minerals are possessed of power no less astonishing, which may be observed whenever an opportunity is offered to call it forth. Active poisons, able to slay the most powerful men and beasts, lie hid within their bosoms. They have strong attractive and repelling powers. From the iron is made the strong cable which holds the vessel fast in her moorings, enabling it to outride the collected force of the winds and waves which threaten its destruction. From it also are manufactured the manacles which bind the strong man, or fasten the lion in his cage. Gold possesses a power which charms nearly all men to sacrifice their ease, and too many their moral principles, to pay their blind devotions at its shrine.
Who will contend that the power of action is confined to the animal creation alone, and that inanimate matter can not act? That there is a superior power possessed by man, endowed with an immaterial spirit in a corporeal body, none will deny. By the agency of the mind he can accomplish wonders, which mere physical power without the aid of such mental skill, could never perform. But with all his boasted superiority, he is often made the slave of inanimate things. His lofty powers of body and soul bend beneath the weight of accumulated sorrows, produced by the secret operations of contagious disease, which slays his wife, children, and friends, who fall like the ripened harvest before the gatherers scythe. Nay, he often submits to the controlling power of the vine, alcohol, or tobacco, which gain a secret influence over his nobler powers, and fix on him the stamp of disgrace, and throw around him fetters from which he finds it no easy matter to extricate himself. By the illusions of error and vice he is often betrayed, and long endures darkness and suffering, till he regains his native energies, and finds deliverance in the enjoyment of truth and virtue.
What is that secret power which lies concealed beyond the reach of human ken, and is transported from land to land unknown, till exposed in conditions suited to its operation, will show its active and resistless force in the destruction of life, and the devastation of whole cities or nations? You may call it plague, or cholera, or small pox, miasma, contagion, particles of matter floating in the air surcharged with disease, or any thing else. It matters not what you call it. It is sufficient to our present purpose to know that it has the ability to put forth a prodigious power in the production of consequences, which the highest skill of man is yet unable to prevent.
I might pursue this point to an indefinite length, and trace the secret powers possessed by all created things, as exhibited in the influence they exert in various ways, both as regards themselves and surrounding objects. But you will at once perceive my object, and the truth of the positions I assume. A common power pervades all creation, operating by pure and perfect laws, regulated by the Great First Cause, the Moving Principle, which guides, governs, and controls the whole.[11]
Degrading indeed must be those sentiments which limit all action to the animal frame as an organized body, moved by a living principle. Ours is a sublimer duty; to trace the operations of the Divine Wisdom which acts thro out all creation, in the minutest particle of dust which keeps its position secure, till moved by some superior power; or in the needle which points with unerring skill to its fixed point, and guides the vessel, freighted with a hundred lives, safe thro the midnight storm, to its destined haven; tho rocked by the waves and driven by the winds, it remains uninfluenced, and tremblingly alive to the important duties entrusted to its charge, continues its faithful service, and is watched with the most implicit confidence by all on board, as the only guide to safety. The same Wisdom is displayed thro out all creation; in the beauty, order, and harmony of the universe; in the planets which float in the azure vault of heaven; in the glow worm that glitters in the dust; in the fish which cuts the liquid element; in the pearl which sparkles in the bottom of the ocean; in every thing that lives, moves, or has a being; but more distinctly in man, created in the moral image of his Maker, possessed of a heart to feel, and a mind to understand—the third in the rank of intelligent beings.
I cannot refuse to favor you with a quotation from that inimitable poem, Pope's Essay on Man. It is rife with sentiment of the purest and most exalted character. It is direct to our purpose. You may have heard it a thousand times; but I am confident you will be pleased to hear it again.
Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, "'Tis for mine:
"For me kind nature wakes her genial pow'r,
"Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flow'r;
"Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
"The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
"For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
"For me health gushes from a thousand springs;
"Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
"My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."
But errs not nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
"No," ('tis replied,) "the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by general laws;
Th' exceptions few; some change since all began:
And what created perfect?" Why then man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then nature deviates—and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As man forever temp'rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design.
Why then a Borgia, or a Cataline?
Who knows but He whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind;
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral as for nat'ral things:
Why charge we heaven in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.
Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The general order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.