PROCEEDINGS OP SOCIETIES. 266 



*' The philosophic mind, in contemplating these triumphs of Man's noblest 

 powers, discovers a wonderful and mysterious relation established by his adorable 

 Creator, between the material universe and his intellectual nature ; the noble 

 faculties of his mind, which are his highest and best gifts, and the sources of his 

 purest and most exalted feelings, have been conferred upon him for cultivation ; 

 the prospective design of their education ; the grand final cause of their confer- 

 ment, was to constitute him what he is, a moral, intellectual, and religious being ; 

 the great object of whose existence ought to be adoration and duty to his God, 

 and love to his fellow men. 



" The wonderful mechanism of the Universe, the grandeur and surpassing 

 beauty every where displayed in the external world, kindle in his mind a thirst 

 for inquiry, and arouse to action his noblest faculties ; the planet we inhabit, by 

 a long series of eventful changes, is sumptuously stored and wonderfully provided 

 for the reception of our species, and every thing is formed in the strictest relation 

 to our nature, and all admirably adapted to call forth the slumbering energies of 

 intellectual powers, and afford Man the fullest scope for exercise of his proud 

 prerogative — reason. 



" That the study of the truths of science should in any way be supposed to be 

 at all calculated to lead the mind astray from its first and most sacred duties, — 

 worship to God, and the contemplation of His revealed Word with all its sub- 

 limities, and assurance of a life of peace and rest beyond the grave, — is a paradox 

 that I humbly confess myself incapable of comprehending ; for what (let me 

 inquire) are the arrangements of the universe, but the expression of the will of 

 their Almighty Architect ? — what the discoveries of science, but a superficial 

 knowledge of those laws by which the fiat of Omnipotence is maintained ? Let 

 not, therefore, our ardent pursuit of truth be checked by any false fears that we 

 may penetrate too deeply into the hidden mysteries of Nature ; for, believe me, 

 in all such investigations, if conducted with an anxious desire to behold truth in 

 all its loveliness, and to develope those mysterious faculties of the mind which it 

 has pleased a Bountiful Providence to confer upon us, and with an humble heart 

 to read Nature's vast volume so liberally thrown open for our instruction, is, next 

 to the worship of its Divine Author, an intellectual duty worthy of the heirs 

 of immortality the performance of which calls into healthy activity the soul's 

 noblest powers, and leads to more lofty conceptions — more sublime contemplations 

 of their glorious and beneficial Author." 



Referring next to the wonders recently brought to light by the study of Fossil 

 Zoology, the lecturer continued — "Were a superficial observer told that th« 

 stone, which records the memory of some dear departed friend, was itself the 

 silent monument left by myriads of animals, whose calcareous parts were incor- 

 porated with its constituent particles at the time the rock itself was forming at 



