GENERAL LAWS DIRECT ALL EVENTS. 3 



series, the extreme terms of which bear no resemblance to each other ; that, commen- 

 cing with those of the earliest date, we are able to trace a constant progress both in 

 intellectual and structural development. In all, there are found evidences of the opera- 

 tion of the same formative power, acting by and resorting to the aid of the same phys- 

 ical principles. The trilobite, of the primary fossiliferous rocks, and man, of the most 

 recent, have, at the first glance, little in common, but a more attentive observation soon 

 shows that the idea of construction in each is so allied, that they have both undoubt- 

 edly sprung from the operations of the same Intelligent Mind. 



7. Do, then, these successive races of sentient beings form altogether a strictly con- 

 tinuous series 1 As in the series of mathematicians, where each term bears a definite 

 relation to those which precede it, and contains within itself the elemental law of those 

 which are to come after it, do each one of these organized beings observe a position of 

 relationship with those that are of earlier, and those also which are of later date ? Do 

 the animals and the plants of the Carboniferous Period connect those of the Silurian 

 with those of the Newer Pleiocene I Were the organized mechanisms of the Old Red 

 Sandstone essential to the appearance and existence of those which live with us ? Are 

 we, in short, to regard the Author of these wonderful forms as operating in each one 

 of these instances by the same law, and, from small beginnings, evolving and transform- 

 ing the most elaborate by a successive passage through those which are inferior ? or 

 are we to understand that, at particular and unconnected epochs, the broad hand of an 

 overruling Providence is to be- discovered, fashioning and framing each class of created 

 forms, irrespective of external physical forces or agents, and giving birth spontaneously 

 to unconnected tribes of animals and plants, which bear no sort of relationship to one 

 another, and are not parts of one common plan in which there is a unity of design ? 



8. The interior movements of the solar system, and the collapsing of nebular masses, 

 are committed to secondary agents or to immutable laws ; and these are events which, 

 for their completion, often require great periods of time. No invisible or extraneous 

 agency ever intervenes. In her predestined course, the moon revolves and exhibits 

 her phases, and, like the beating pendulum, though ten thousand years may have elap- 

 sed since its last beat, the comet the pendulum of the universe swings punctually past 

 the sun. That universe is not an unchangeable mass, but is made up of moving and 

 revolving orbs, which are all obedient to one common law. Do not, therefore, such 

 things point out, that, in the midst of all these transitory affairs, immutable principles 

 are involved, and a common law is incessantly in operation ? 



9. In the history of the human race, it may be observed that epochs have occurred, 

 which, following each other with a kind of periodicity, have stood in relationship with, 

 or even brought about, the conditions of modern civilization. As in the course of the 

 life of an individual there is no incident which is not in connexion with circumstances 

 which have preceded it, and none that does not give a bent to those that follow, we 

 naturally view the vicissitudes of our existence as bearing the relation of cause and 

 effect. We trace the circumstances of to-day from the circumstances of yesterday. 

 In the movements of the celestial bodies we continually see fixed events resulting from 

 the operation of apparently variable causes; the waxing and waning of the moon, the 



