THE OLD RED SANDSTONE 259 
series arisen, or has Deity expended his infinitude of resource, 
and reached the ultimate stage of progression at which per- 
fection can arrive? The philosopher hesitated, and then de- 
cided in the negative, for he was too intimately acquainted 
with the works of the Omnipotent Creator to think of limit- » 
ing his power; and he could, therefore, anticipate a coming 
period in which man would have to resign his post of honor 
to some nobler and wiser creature — the monarch of a better 
and happier world. How well it is, to be permitted to indulge 
in the expansion of Cuvier’s thought, without sharing in the 
melancholy of Cuvier’s feeling —to be enabled to look for- 
ward to the coming of a new heaven and a new earth, not in 
terror, but in hope —to be encouraged to believe in the sys- 
tem of unending progression, but to entertain no fear of the 
degradation or deposition of man! The adorable Monarch 
of the future, with all its unsummed perfection, has already 
passed into the heavens, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our 
bone, and Enoch and Elias are there with him — fit repre- 
sentatives of that dominant race, which no other race shall 
ever supplant or succeed, and to whose onward and upward 
march the deep echoes of eternity shall never cease to 
respond. 
