believer in an intelligent Creator is only deserving of a place in the incurable ward of Bedlam, and the man who does not include the properties and laws of all creatures in the act of creation, is not a correct and consistent reasoner.

But God having made all things, and that at once in full maturity or perfection, in order that the several properties or instincts with which each was endowed might come simultaneously into operation (which we must assume, because these properties and instincts form the conditions upon which the subsistence of all things depend)—we have no scale or measure in the things themselves, from whence to calculate the time when they first came into existence. If the earth was created with hill and dale, mountains and plains, rivers and seas—as it must have been, that streams might flow to water the earth, and plants might have their appropriate soils and climates then these hills and this variety of soil afford no criteria for judging of time. And if trees were created of full size, to cover the earth and yield to animals their food, it follows that the size of trees affords no criterion for determining the time when trees began to grow; for, on the morrow after its creation the oak of yesterday would present the appearance of those oaks which may have required, in the course of nature, the growth of a thousand years. And if animals were created full grown, and in numbers proportioned to the plants severally assigned to them for food, then neither the size nor the number of these are any index of the time when animals were first called into existence by the Creator. Moreover, respecting the classification of plants and animals, which is remarked in those strata of the earth which contain organic remains, we should remember that such a creation as we are speaking of ensures a sort of classification, by the congregating of numbers of the same species into those localities where only the plants destined for their food will grow. The mountain air and its climate, which certain plants require for their existence, are also congenial to the habits and feelings of the animals which feed upon the products of the mountain; and so of the plain or the morass-they are agreeable to the constitution of those species that inhabit them. And even in the depths of the sea we have no doubt that there is a classification, and that fishes of different tribes prefer living at different depths, induced by natural conformation and attracted by the food which they prefer being there to be found. In such considerations as these we have no doubt that sufficient materials will be found for checking the over-confident speculations of modern geology, touching the structure and quan

tity of their stratified deposits, and the number or classification of organic remains, with the true relation they bear to the first constitution of the earth, and the nature of the convulsions or changes which have since taken place.

Whatsoever the facts may be which geology shall bring to light, whatever inferences which may be drawn from such facts concerning the primeval constitution of the earth-these are all necessarily of secondary importance, and of inferior weight to those considerations of which we have just been speaking. For we have been speaking of actually existing things, and our reasoning has been grounded upon laws at present in operation, and facts which we daily witness; but geology can only be cognizant of the results of operations which have long ceased, and can only infer, from present appearances, what might have been the case under circumstances which no longer exist, but which must have been confessedly very different from any within our present experience. Appearances may deceive— inferences may be false-other facts may exist, and future discovery may bring them to light, which may prove your inferences to be erroneous. Nay, the very point which geology requires us to concede in the first instance, and without which it cannot take a step-the agency of volcanoes and earthquakes-is a point which we cannot allow in any scientific enquiry-in any deduction of principles, or any systematic account of facts. And this because in such kind of agency there is no law, no principle to be found at present, and it would be only escaping one difficulty by getting into a far greater. Geology would have us commence with disorder and chaos, and at every step would have recourse to volcanoes and earthquakes, which are the very opposite of principle, order, and law--whose every action is mere violence, with no rule but that of a greater opposing force; and which acknowledge no controul, save the exhaustion of an explosive power, or the termination of a stream of lava and scoriæ-strange elements these to form the basis of any system, save in the fabled kingdom of misrule, and the regions of chance.

The principle that God hath made all things, and impressed upon them those laws which we behold now in actual operation, we insist upon in every enquiry; because this principle is established on a foundation which nothing can shake. And if any of the facts of geology seem to contravene this principle, we say, without the least hesitation, that those facts must be misunderstood. But for ourselves, we say that, though we have carefully watched the progress of geology from the time that it first began to take the form of a science—that is, from the

days of Werner, Hutton, and Smith, with their noble coadjutors, Hauy, Cuvier, and Agassiz-we know of no such contravening facts. That many of the explanations of facts contravene this principle we freely allow, but these explanations are quite another affair. For of the same facts we are prepared to give very different explanations, whensoever we shall think the proper time is come-explanations by which, we are bold to say, that all the facts may be shown to be consistent with principles of science which are acknowledged, and with Christian theology.

And, as in the creation and first disposition of all things, we insist upon the recognition of the hand of God, so in any great disturbance of that order, in any general change, in any universal catastrophe, consistency obliges us to require the same Almighty hand to suspend or alter the laws of the universe, as at the first to impose those laws. We find everywhere traces of an universal deluge: this could not come by any natural means-could only be brought about by temporary suspension of, and interference with, the present constitution of things. But ascribing this to God, we expect to find even here consistency with the other acts of God, and that a cause for this interference shall appear, which shall bring it into accordance with those principles by which we are taught that God hath ordered and governed all things. We will not allow that the world has been abandoned, at any time, to chance; since this would amount to allowing that it was taken out of the hand of God for a time, to be taken in hand again by Him when that turmoil of chance should be over. It is unphilosophical to suppose that God has ever relinquished His hold of the things that He has made, or ever relaxed the superintendence of creation's laws for it would be tantamount to saying that the creation thus relinquished is no more, and that a new creation begins when God resumes His superintendence; and it is tantamount to saying that of the former creation we can know nothing, for it would be virtually separated from all our present experiences by that Godless blank-that supposed chaotic hubbub-that trackless, purposeless, fathomless abyss of anarchy which we find to be the pervading idea of all the modern systems of geology. The earthquakes, volcanoes, and deluges, of which we have any present experience, are on so small a scale in comparison with the surface of the earth, as to be mere exceptions to the general law, or at most partial evils for universal good. These can occur without breaking down or violating the general laws under which the whole creation is bound together. But the universal and reiterated

catastrophes, which are assumed as the basis of geology, could not take place without the utter subversion, for the time, of all those laws of matter by which the different substances are maintained in their several positions; and under which conditions alone the life of all the creatures with which we are acquainted could be continued.

The deluge, like the creation, we ascribe to the immediate power of God, put forth, on that occasion, in a manner as orderly, for the destruction of the world, as it had been put forth at the beginning, for its creation. And because we can trace order in the facts brought to light by geology, we expect to understand them in due time, and to find the deluge of Noah to have been an important agent in producing that state of things which those facts disclose, and to find also that the same laws which are now in operation have remained inviolable, both during the catastrophe itself, and before the time when it took place. When man sins, it provokes the judgment of God, and to the man God seems to have changed, when it is he that has shifted his place. The Creator does not change when the creature changes; but the change of the creature makes those laws which had operated for good before, become, when it has deteriorated, instruments of evil.

In geology, as in every other science, certain data are presumed, as established by previous observation, from which data all our investigations proceed, in analogy with recognized general principles, in order to ascertain how the geological facts are connected with each other and with science in general; so as to account for what is already known, and to assure ourselves that under similar circumstances similar results will always appear. We must assume that the materials of which the earth consists remain the same in quantity and in kind under all circumstances, and that where several substances are combined none of the original elements are changed-none of them are lost; but each simple substance may be made to re-appear, with all its own properties undiminished, by careful analysis or decomposition. This fact, concerning the indestructibility of matter, has been frequently and most satisfactorily demonstrated by chymists and mineralogists, and forms the basis of all accurate reasoning in geology. But thus taking it for granted that the primary elements exist, in fixed and definite quantities, and each retaining constantly its own properties under all circumstances, and in whatever variety they may be combined, geology endeavours to account rationally for the appearances with which an accurate examination of the earth's surface has made us acquainted-both as to the separate for

mations regarded singly, and also as to their relationship towards other formations and to the earth as a whole. Man can neither create nor destroy: none of the resources of science are able to add to the quantity, or change the properties of the primary elements of nature: we only more simplify or more combine things already existing.

The dreams of the alchymists concerning the creation or transmutation of metals are no longer worthy of a thought.

Gravitation itself-the most universal law of matter, and the law which most of all bears upon the question of geology -can only be rendered comprehensible by assuming that all known space is filled with atoms infinitely small, yet indestructible in their ultimate unity; and that, in consequence of this indestructibility, one set of them striking upon another set, produces that uniform motion of all bodies towards other distant bodies, and of the particles of each body towards its own centre, which we call gravitation. For as each atom, which received a blow, would shield another atom from such a blow in that direction, while the atom shielded on one side would be receiving blows on all other sides, impelling it towards the atom which shielded it, and which itself was being driven towards the atom shielded-so the law resulting from such a supposition would be precisely that which we know experimentally to be the law of gravitation: the joint action upon the two atoms would cause any two bodies, consisting of aggregations of such atoms, to rush towards each other with a force, which would be direct according to their masses, inverse according to the square of their distance. But this supposes that the atoms which are impelled, and the atomic power which impels, are equally indestructible and constant.

Again: the brilliant discoveries of Dalton, concerning the definite proportions which are uniformly found in all chemical combinations, cannot be dissociated from the persuasion that the ultimate particles of all bodies are distinct in nature, unalterable in their properties, indestructible as to substance. The conviction that it is so, greatly shortened Dalton's path, greatly facilitated his discoveries; and to us they can scarcely be rendered intelligible without adopting substantially, and to a practical extent, Dalton's own convictions concerning atoms. His first decisive experiments were made on elastic gases, and the air we breathe-regions in which we should least expect to find ponderable, definable, indestructible particles of matter: but finding the law of definite proportion and indestructibility to be constant in the thin air we breathe, and substances invisible, impalpable, and ethereal, it was a comparatively easy