34 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



The causes of such modifications have not 

 ceased to operate from the earliest period of the 

 existence of our globe to the present hour, for 

 they depend upon laws originally impressed upon 

 matter by the Great Creator, and not only uni- 

 versal, but unceasing in their action. Many and 

 various as are the vicissitudes to which material 

 substances are liable, the laws by which these 

 vicissitudes occur are not themselves subject to 

 mutation. In this respect those laws partake of 

 the nature of their Mighty Originator, who is 

 " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.*' In 

 the primitive islands and continents which existed 

 in periods incalculably remote from the present 

 epoch, and were afterwards wholly or partially 

 submerged beneath the waters, the combinations 

 produced by the laws of chemistry, and the changes 

 effected by other physical agencies, were no other 

 than those which at the present day take place 

 around us. Heat, light, electricity, together with 

 the chemical ingredients of air and water, pro- 

 duced by their incessant action the same series 

 of combinations as they now effect. The same 

 results as are now observable arose in those 

 remote periods from the mechanical action of ma- 

 terial substances. Then as now the waters of the 

 great deep were carried by evaporation into the 

 atmosphere ; at an altitude determined by certain 

 laws they became clouds, and fell in snow, hail, 

 or rain upon the mountains, and forming rivers 

 pursued their way to the ocean from which they 

 originally came. The rivers thus formed, even 



