306 



which reposed in seeming death, has burst its 

 shell, and has only assumed a new form. Go 

 to the human tomb -the remains of what once 

 was man are still there, mouldering into dust! 



But, although neither these analogies, nor any 

 other phenomena of natural religion, amount to 

 a proof that man survives the tomb, yet, when 

 this doctrine has been propagated on the autho- 

 rity of Divine revelation, they come with a very 

 powerful effect on the mind. They shew, in a 

 remarkable and convincing light, the correspon- 

 dence between natural and revealed religion, and 

 thus form an argument in confirmation of the 

 latter, rather than a proof of that particular doc- 

 trine to which they more immediately refer. 



But, besides this general adjustment to each 

 other, of the principles of natural and revealed 

 religion, there are some remarkable instances, 

 of a different kind, in which, also, the disco- 

 veries of the former give confirmation ~to the 

 declarations of the latter. I have already ad- 

 duced one example of this species of confirma- 

 tion, derivable from the science of geology, in 

 which the truth of the Mosaic account of the 

 flood, and the accuracy of the very period when 

 that awful catastrophe is said in the Divine re- 

 cord to have occurred, are most satisfactorily de- 

 monstrated. To geology we are also indebted 

 for other coincidences of a similar nature ; and 

 among these there is one, which, although I have 

 nowhere seen it noticed, arid although it is rather 

 circumstantial than direct, is very convincing to 



