314 Natural TJieology. 



the corals and shells that remain. But the more 

 animal life we find, the more plant life there must 

 have been to sustain it. 



We come next to the creation of the sun and 

 moon. " And God said, Let there be lights in tJie 

 firmament of heaven, to divide the day from the 

 night ; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and 

 for days, and years. And let them be for light in the 

 firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth : 

 and it was so!' 



It must strike every one as remarkable that 

 Moses should give an account of light and the in- 

 troduction of plants upon the globe, before describ- 

 ing the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, from 

 which the earth now receives its light and heat. 

 No impostor would have done that. Now, if we 

 examine the coal plants in all parts of the world, 

 we find them plants of low type, such as grow 

 luxuriantly only in the tropics ; a hot, damp atmo- 

 sphere being their best locality. These coal plants 

 are found in nearly all parts of the earth. There 

 are beds of coal in Greenland, where now only a few 

 Arctic plants can grow. It is plain that in the coal 

 period there was a very high and uniform tempera- 

 ture all over the globe ; the heat of the tropics, 

 where the Greenland glaciers now rest. This heat 

 so distributed could not come from the sun alone, 

 but from the earth not yet cool. It was one great 

 hot-house ; and consequently the air was constantly 

 filled with dense clouds in its upper regions. For 

 ages there could have been no clear sky as we now 



