OF THE SEA AND LAND. 55 



of these catastrophes has been, and what the coming 

 one will be. 



In a moral view, that Last Day is a special act of 

 the Divine interposition. Yet as the final catastrophe 

 of this our earth is but one out of a number of pre- 

 ceding and similar events, we are entitled to conclude 

 that it will be effected, like the past, by secondary 

 causes, by powers which have been prepared from the 

 beginning; and which, if they are beyond our compre- 

 hension, are no less ordained than those which re- 

 gulate the motions of the Universe, but which are 

 under the command of Him who governs as He 

 created. Truly does Newton say, what all who ever 

 thought seriously, have thought not less than he; that 

 " the growth of new systems out of old ones without 

 the mediation of a Divine Power, is absurd:" but they 

 who quote him whom they cannot read, and on sub- 

 jects which they do not understand, to prove that no 

 secondary causes have acted in the formation of the 

 Earth, have forgotten that Newton himself sought for 

 a secondary cause of Gravitation. If, when he called 

 it " unphilosophieal to pretend that this earth might 

 rise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature," he in- 

 tended what his ignorant commentators suppose, not 

 even the name of Newton can be authority against facts, 

 and, above all, on a subject which he did not know; 

 Were it not even opposed to all that we see of the pro- 

 ceedings of the I )eity. The world has arisen " out 

 of chaos" more than once, and by the " mere laws of 

 Nature :" but He who created Nature created its Laws ; 

 and He who appointed them upholds them daily, and 

 commands them to act as it pleases Him. There is 

 no collision between the purrest Piety and the sound- 

 est Philosophy: it is they who pretend to the one, and 

 possess not the other, who are the bane of both. 



