238 Natural Theology. 



that in this apparent chaos there is perfect order 

 and a provision for man as an intellectual as well as 

 a physical being. 



The student of antiquities has no lexicon except 

 some chance Rosetta stone, for reading the strange 

 inscriptions on the bricks and slabs of those an- 

 cient, buried cities. Their engravers, and those who 

 wrote and spoke the languages, are gone ; not a 

 single letter will ever be added to those already 

 written. From them alone, unchanging and un- 

 changeable, must a key be found by which the world 

 can unlock their meaning. Not so of the history 

 written in the rocks of the earth. No Rosetta stone 

 is needed to throw light upon these inscriptions. 

 The language engraven there, God is repeating 

 every year in the sunshine and storm, and in the 

 varied forms of animals and plants that live and 

 die. This language the students of nature had 

 already begun to learn. As they opened the leaves 

 of stone, the forms were strange indeed, and anti- 

 quate;!, like the characters in the old black-letter 

 volumes of our libraries, but the language was soon 

 seen to be the same as had been the mother-tongue 

 of naturalists for generations. The intellectual 

 triumphs in this field are too recent to need mention 

 here. The ablest leaders have still their armor on. 

 But for fifty years, there has been no such field of 

 thought as Geology ; no study to which the universal 

 mind has so turned ; none that has thrown up such a 

 background where thought can rest, or -run back 

 through the ages. No place in the universe can 



