182 THE LAW. 



and origin. The distance that separates the Uncreated 

 from the created is no doubt inconceivably great, but who 

 shall fix the " Hither shalt thou come but no farther" of 

 the legitimate efforts of the human intellect 1 



[Uniformity of Type and Pattern.] 



At whatever stage the first creation of plants and animals 

 took place, the same types and patterns have ever run 

 throughout the whole analogous functions have had to be 

 performed ; and the various biological provinces of every 

 epoch have been peopled, even as they are now, partly by 

 identical and partly by representative species. The earliest 

 sea- weed that floated in Silurian waters spread its broad 

 leathery lobes, and grew and multiplied precisely like the 

 sea-weeds of existing seas ; the shell-fish were constructed 

 after the same types, and so similar in many respects, that 

 only the practised conchologist can detect their specific dis- 

 tinctions ; the fishes of the old red sandstone, strange as 

 they may appear, find their analogues, bone for bone, and 

 organ for organ, in existing fishes ; while the reptiles of the 

 Oolite and Weald present, in their gigantic skeletons, 

 nothing that the comparative anatomist cannot readily 

 identify with .the homologies of the vertebrate pattern. 

 And not only the structural plan, but the structural com- 

 position of each great type has been equally persistent and 

 normal. The mucilaginous sea-weed for ever leaves its 

 faint impress devoid of cortical integument, the terrestrial 

 stem has ever constructed its woody pillar of carbon, the 

 equisetum elaborated its varnish of silica, and the pine- 

 trees distilled their resins and amber. The corals of Siluria, 

 like those of the existing Pacific, consist of carbonate of 

 lime ; the fossil and the recent tooth have alike their den- 



