This commission is yet obscure.  It has so far only gradually opened to him, for he is sailing under sealed orders.  He is still led on from point to point.  But the farther he goes, and the more his past gathers behind him, the better is he able to imagine what must be before him.  His chart is every day getting more full of amazing indications.  He is beginning to feel about him the increasing press of some Providential design that has been permeating and moulding age after age, and to discover that be has been all along unconsciously prosecuting a secret mission.  And so it comes at last that everything new takes that look; every evolution of mind, every addition to knowledge, every discovery of truth, every novel achievement appearing like the breaking of seals and opening of rolls, in the performance of an inexhaustible and mysterious trust that has been committed to his hands.

It is the purpose of this paper to collect together some of these facts and incidents of progress, in order to show that this is not a mere dream, but a stupendous reality.  History shall be the inspiration of our prophecy.

There is a past to be recounted, a present to be described, and a future to be foretold.  An immense review for a magazine article, and it will require some ingenuity to be brief and graphic at the same time.  In the attempt to get as much as possible into the smallest space, many things will have to be omitted, and some most profound particulars merely glanced at; but enough will be furnished, perhaps, to make the point we have in view.

We may compare human progress to a tall tree which has reared itself, slowly and imperceptibly, through century after century, hardly more than a bare trunk, with here and there only the slight outshoot of some temporary exploit of genius, but which in this age gives the signs of that immense foliage and fruitage which shall in time embower the whole earth.  We see but its spring-time of leaf,—­for it is only within fifty years that this rich outburst of wonders began.  We live in an era when progress is so new as to be a matter of amazement.  A hundred years hence, perhaps it will have become so much a matter of course to develop, to expand, and to discover, that it will excite no comment.  But it is yet novel, and we are yet fresh.  Therefore we may gaze back at what has been, and gaze forward at what is promised to be, with more likelihood of being impressed than if we were a few centuries older.

If we look down at the roots out of which this tree has risen, and then up at its spreading branches,—­omitting its intermediate trunk of ages, through which its processes have been secretly working,—­perhaps we may realize in a briefer space the wonder of it all.

In the beginning of history, according to received authority, there was but a little tract of the earth occupied, and that by one family, speaking but one tongue, and worshipping but one God,—­all the rest of the world being an uninhabited wild.  At this stage of history the whole globe is explored, covered with races of every color, a host of nations and languages, with every diversity of custom, development of character, and form of religion.  The physical bound from that to this is equalled only by the leap which the world of mind has made.