THE word Remarks is here especially applicable, because the subject of this tract is far too wide to admit of being reduced to system. Not in our day, nor perhaps in any future day, can the sum-total of the capacities and duties of a human being be known; for the very word progressive, now so generally applied to humanity, means an amount of change which must in time result in knowledge and activity beyond calculation at any given period. With regard to men, this is never denied; the philosopher looks forward to indefinite perfection of the race—to science of which ours is but a faint foreshadowing—to social arrangements whose very germs are now present but in the minds of a few—and to ages when the facilities for gaining knowledge will be such as to leave time and power for undreamt-of researches; and this anticipation of future progress is no feeling merely of the present day, nor is it confined to philosophy and social science alone; even some of the most energetic of the Reformers felt that in relation to the Scriptures and to this world they had not fathomed the whole counsel of God, whilst in all Christian teaching the ideal of man consists in an unresting aspiration, whose complete satisfaction not even eternity can give.