I 



ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 271 



can now see, "as if in a glass darkly," enough appears from 

 which to 



" Assert eternal Providence, 

 And justify the ways of God to man." 



The history of the four great monarchies of the world was 

 typifed, in the prophetic dream of the ancient Babylonish 

 king, by a colossal image, " terrible in its form and bright- 

 ness,"' of which the " head was of pure gold," the " breast and 

 arms of silver," the " belly and thighs of brass," and the legs 

 and feet "of iron, and of iron mingled with clay." The 

 vision in which it formed the central object was appropriately 

 that of a puissant monarch ; and the image itself typified the 

 merely human monarchies of the earth. It would require a 

 widely difierent figure to symbolize the great monarchies of 

 creation. And yet Revelation does furnish such a figure. 

 It is that which was witnessed by the captive prophet beside 

 " the river Chebar," when " the heavens were opened, and 

 he saw visions of God." In that chariot of Deity, glowing 

 in fire and amber, with its complex wheels "so high that 

 they were dreadful," set round about with eyes, there were 

 living creatures, of whose four faces three were brute and 

 one human ; and high over all sat the Son of Man. It would 

 almost seem as if, in this sublime vision, — in which, with 

 features distinct enough to impress the imagination, there 

 mingle the elements of an awful incomprehensibility, and 

 which even the genius of KafFaelle has failed adequately to 

 portray, — the history of all the past and of all the future 

 had been symbolized. In the order of Providence intimated 

 in the geologic record, the brute faces, as in the vision, out- 

 number the human; — the human dynasty is one, and the 

 dynasties of the inferior animals are three ; and yet who can 

 doubt that they all equally compose parts of a well-ordered 

 and perfect whole, as the four faces formed but one cheru- 

 bim ; that they have been moving onward to a definite goal, 



