152 NATURAL HISTORY 



men, it may therefore be simply a human produc- 

 tion it may be changed, portions lost, and portions 

 added. But no human hand has lifted the hills, 

 no scheming founder of religions has rolled back the 

 strata of the earth, and placed there the fossils to 

 mark the supernatural introduction of life. ]STo 

 company of his followers have set the forests, and 

 filled the waters with their teeming tribes. He that 

 believes in a God, believes in Him first as the 

 creator, and will believe in no book as coming from 

 Him, through the instrumentality of men, that 

 contradicts this revelation of nature, which came 

 direct from the hand of God, before the creation of 

 man, and beyond the power of man to change in a 

 single letter. If the Bible is the message of God, 

 delivered by His embassadors, who were clothed 

 with plenary power to do it, Nature is the auto- 

 graph letter of the great Sovereign ; and now, that 

 men have learned to read it, they demand as condi- 

 tion of belief in the message written by men that it 

 shall not contradict the letter, which they know to 

 be genuine, stamped as it is with the great seal of 

 almighty power which He has committed to the 



