Geology. 5 5 



is written by man. But the everlasting hills were 

 not raised by man. No man can roll back the 

 stony tablets of the earth and blot out their record. 

 No skill of man can adjust the nice mechanism 

 of the living beings now upon earth ; no power of his 

 can sustain them for a moment when it is adjusted. 

 If there is a God who created all things, we know 

 that in nature we can find his handiwork, which all 

 the wisdom and strength of men are as powerless 

 to create or change as they are to bind the earth 

 in its course, <>r to blot out the sun in the heavens. 



On the other hand, suppose we had never seen or 

 heard of a written Revelation, but were possessed 

 of all the knowledge of nature we now have, what 

 some of the questions that would be suggested 

 to us, and some of the inferences we should draw 

 from the world as it is ? How came man upon the 

 ;h? would certainly be a question that could 

 not fail to demand an answer. \Yith our present 

 knowledge, the argument of endless succession is 

 lolly, -and its labored refutation by Paley and others, 

 mere lumber. Such arguments were needed in the 

 day when Paley could say that if asked how a stone 

 came upon the heath, he might answer that, for 

 aught he knew, it had lain there for ever. But in 

 our day, when that stone can be traced back to the 

 bed from which it was torn ; when the forces that 

 formed it, and those that tore it from its resting- 

 place are well understood we should expect a dif- 

 ferent line of argument. In fact, the whole science 

 of geology has come in since Paley's day ; a science 



