IN FAVOR OF REVEALED RELIGION. 311 
side, to permit us to judge of the influence which the discov- 
eries of the geologist are yet to exercise on the ethical depart- 
ments of literature. We can, however, already see that the 
vastly extended knowledge of God’s workings of old which 
the science communicates, must exercise no slight influence 
upon certain departments of natural theology, and give a new 
tone to those controversies regarding the evidences of our faith 
which the Church has ever and anon to maintain with the 
world. Geology has already put an end to that old fiction 
of an infinite series of beings which the atheist was wont to 
substitute in his reasonings for the great First Cause through 
which all exists; nor does it leave other than very unsolid 
ground to the men who would fain find an equivalent for the 
exploded infinite series of their predecessors in a developing 
principle. Nay, I would ask such of the gentlemen whom I 
now address as have studied the subject most thoroughly, 
whether, at those grand lines of division between. the Palzo- 
zoic and Secondary, and again between the Secondary and 
Tertiary periods, at which the entire type of organic being 
alters, so that all on the one side of the gap belongs to one 
fashion, and all on the other to another and wholly different 
fashion,— whether they have not been as thoroughly impressed 
with the conviction that there existed a Creative Agent to 
whom the sudden change was owing, as if they themselves 
had witnessed the miracle of creation? Further, may we not 
hold that that acquaintance with bygone creations, each in suc- 
cession of a higher type than the one which preceded it, which 
geology enables us to form, must soon greatly affect the state 
of arguments employed on the skeptical side, which, framed on 
the assumption that creation is but a “singular effect, —- an 
effect without duplicate, — have urged, that from that one effect 
only can we know aught regarding the producing Cause? 
Knowing of the Cause but from the effect, and having expe- 
