THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 4] 
falls. Now it is a geological fact, that it is fish of the higher 
orders that appear first on the stage, and that they are found 
to occupy exactly the same level during the vast period rep- 
resented by five succeeding formations. There is no pro- 
gression. If fish rose into reptiles, it must have been by 
sudden transformation — it must have been as if a man who 
had stood still for half a lifetime should bestir himself all at 
once, and take seven leagues ata stride. There is no get- 
ting rid of miracle in the case — there is no alternative be- 
tween creation and metamorphosis. The infidel substitutes 
progression for Deity ; Geology robs him of his god. 
But no man who enters the geological field in quest of the 
wonderful, need pass in pursuit of his object from the true to 
the fictitious. Does the reader remember how in Milton’s 
sublime figure, the body of Truth is represented as hewn in 
pieces, and her limbs scattered over distant regions, and how 
her friends and disciples have to go wandering all over the 
world in quest of them? There is surely something very 
wonderful in the fact, that, in uniting the links of the chain 
of creation into an unbroken whole, we have in like manner 
to seek for them all along the scale of the geologist ; — some 
we discover among the tribes first annihilated — some among 
the tribes that perished at a later period some among the 
existences of the passing time. We find the present incom- 
plete without the past — the recent without the extinct. There 
are marvellous analogies which pervade the scheme of Provi- 
dence, and unite, as it were, its lower with its higher parts. 
The perfection of the works of Deity is a perfection entire 
in its components; and yet these are not contemporaneous, 
but successive : it is a perfection which includes the dead as 
well as the living, and bears relation, in its completeness, not 
to time, but to eternity. 
4 8 
