224 UNITY OF SYSTEM. 



visions is accompanied by the discovery and application of move general 

 laws to which all this knowledge is subject, and is thus brought within 

 the comprehension of man. All the lines of knowledge during their pro- 

 gress converge more and more together until their final union under one 

 law, and the agreement between them is more perfect in proportion as 

 their advance is equal, but if one of them is stationary while others are 

 progressive, they appear rather to oppose than to illustrate and explain 

 each other. The system of the Bible has not been studied like'Uhat of 

 Nature, and this is the cause that the facts of one occasionally seem 

 to contradict those of the other. The laws of God in Astronomy and 

 Chemistry were concealed or encumbered for ages by Astrology and 

 Alchemy, and, in like manner, but to a much greater extent, the simpli- 

 city of the Bible has been disfigured by innumerable traditions, from which 

 it is now comparatively free. The eternal life disclosed throughout the 

 Bible precedes and is to succeed the present creation, which, notwithstand- 

 ing the innumerable ages of its geological periods, is still but 



"A narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas, 

 The past, the future, two eternities." 



The course of the visible creation, though ordained for the progressive 

 manifestation of eternal life, yet consists of a series of divergences, in 

 which every part and faculty of the present existence is in turn developed, 

 and recedes in this development more and more from its source, and 

 accordingly after a while, comparatively ceases, in order to make room for 

 or to be transferred to the development of another power. These epochs 

 or developments appear to be successively more comprehensive or higher in 

 degree, and more deeply interesting. 



In order that observations on the Unity of System in this earth and in 

 all it3 creatures, and in its successive and progressive epochs, may be 

 distinct, the outline of the whole design must first be traced, and there- 

 fore before proceeding further with the details of the system, I will return 

 to the origin of creation, and will endeavour to shew the purpose of the 

 law of degradation, or rather to notice a superior law to which that one 

 is secondary and final. The Deity, it is said, before the beginning, and 

 previous to all visible creation, fixed for the latter end and for all its 

 parts two states — the first natural and final, the second eternal — and pre- 

 destined all the epochs and events in nature and in the history of man. 

 The foreknowledge of the number and variety of the creatures, and the 

 pre-arrangement of them in one system, and in subjection to one law 

 and the progress of them all from simplicity to complexity by the suc- 

 cessive appearance of new means or elements of power, while the former 

 agents do not cease but are only diminished, claim admiration as much as 



