OF THE S*EA AND LAND. 59 



And is all this effected without the visible exertion 

 of Power ? It is ; but to him only who cannot see 

 what He is doing, to him who looks on the course of 

 nature as chance or necessity, and to him who, in see- 

 ing the power of secondary causes, forgets the First. 

 The preceding history of the earth teaches me another 

 lesson: and may I not be exempted from detailing the 

 beautiful system of machinery by which this system is 

 carried on ? in the chemical provisions by which the 

 rocks are hardened that their destruction may be gra- 

 dual, and by which they are subjected to decomposition 

 from the most apparently feeble causes ; in this and 

 more, and in that eternal circulation of water through 

 which the remainder of this great process is effected. 

 It is best that the reader should reflect for himself; 

 for thus will he learn to feel what he who reads for- 

 gets to think of. 



Yet before I quit this subject of the extension of 

 the habitable earth, let me remind the reader of the 

 Coral islands ; of that separate provision for the same 

 great Final Cause, to which we know not where to 

 place a limit, and which may yet double the present 

 habitable surface, should it be thought necessary. 

 Nor is this all. That the Creator possesses unlimited 

 powers, we know ; but that which we cannot see or 

 conjecture, is, in Physical reasoning, as if it was not. 

 But we can see that there is a power in His hand 

 which He has used from all times, which He is using 

 now, and with which, whenever He pleases, under no 

 other interference than we daily see, He may, in one 

 short year or month, render fertile a wide extent of 

 of that desolation which shortsightedness has termed 

 hopeless. And who shall say that even this may not 

 be within His plans, seeing what they are, knowing 

 how He effects them ? Archimedes asked but for a 



