Regarding Man, independently of any revealed knowledge of his future
destiny, but simply with reference to his relations with the physical
world about him, Mr. Hopkins, the able geologist, asks: “Do we see in
his character and position here any indication that this earth is his
destined abiding place for indefinite periods of time? We conceive that
a negative answer to the question is suggested at least by the fact that
the extent of the earth’s surface and its powers of production are
_finite_, whereas the tendency in human population to increase is
unlimited. It is undoubtedly easy to conceive this tendency to be
arrested, but not probably by causes consistent with the moral and
physical well-being of the race. Whether human population may have
increased or not during the last two thousand years, is a matter of
little import, we conceive, to the question before us. We know that it
is now spreading itself over many parts of the globe, under influences
far different from those under which it has heretofore extended,—the
influence of Christianity, and of that higher civilisation which must
attend the pure doctrines of our religion. We believe that this
extension and increase of the civilised races of mankind will continue;
and, however it may be temporarily checked by the hardships and evils to
which man is subject, we can hardly understand how this tendency can be
effectively and finally arrested before the population of the globe
shall have approximated to that limit which must be necessarily imposed
upon it by the finite dimensions of man’s dwelling-place. We know not
what might be the views of political economists on this ultimate
condition of human population; but we feel it difficult to conceive its
existence, under merely human influences, independently of physical
want, and possibly of that moral debasement which so frequently attends
it. In fact, those who regard man simply in his human character and in
his relations to _nature_, and not in his relations to God, must find in
his earthly future the most insoluble problem which can offer itself to
the speculative philosopher. It would seem equally difficult to assign
to the human race an indefinite term of existence, or to sweep it away
by natural causes from the face of the earth. But it is in such
questions as this that a steady faith in man’s Creator and Redeemer
affords to the embarrassed mind a calm and welcome resting-place. Those
who believe man’s introduction on the earth to have been a direct act of
his Almighty Creator, will not think it necessary to look for his final
earthly destiny in the operation of merely secondary causes, but will
refer it to the same Divine Agency as that to which he refers the origin
of the race.”[69]
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Footnote 69:
_Geology_, by William Hopkins, M.A., F.R.S.; _Cambridge Essays_, 1857.
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The School of Life.