15 



to the strata of mineral coal, extending in beds of va- 

 rious thickness throughout our own country and others, 

 and supplying millions with fuel. What a beautiful 

 illustration of the truth, that nature does nothing in 

 vain ; determines that none of her works shall be use- 

 less ; gives even to decaying matter its business and 

 function in that . well organized machinery, which 

 holds a world together in perfect and dependant har- 

 mony. 



5. Tt is said that all these phenomena depend, for 

 the most part, on the destruction of rocks, the altera- 

 tion of whole races of vegetables, the immolation of 

 entire classes of animals. Why was this 1 



The reply is in the soil, which is but the rotted rock, 

 detached by air and water from the mountain, crum- 

 bled and rolled into the cultivated valley. Again, it is 

 found in the freezing water, which expanding, tears 

 these rocks asunder,^ the better to undergo the pro- 

 cess of decomposition. Again, see the answer in 

 the coal beds, and metalhc. veins whose mouths are 

 raised up and expanded to the view by heat and elec- 

 tricity, and for the convenience of man ; in the salts re- 

 sulting from animal remains, so necessary to the pur- 

 poses of life, so extensively used in chemistry, the 

 trades and sciences of men ; again, see the reply in the 

 beautifully variegated marble of your pallaces and por- 

 tico'B, the streaks and tints of which owe their beauti- 

 ful combination to bitumen, the refuse of animal and 

 Vegetable matter. Will it now be asked why did na- 

 ture destroy all these, that man might live ? Has man, 

 who asks the question, destroyed nothing, he who sin- 

 gles out from the great scheme, a single exception on 

 which to rest his objections to a Providence governing 



