Z NATURAL THEOLOGY, 



found a watch upon the ground, and it should he 

 inquired how the watch happened to be in that 

 place, I should hardly think of the answer which 

 I had before given — that, for anything I knew, 

 the watch might have always been there. Yet 

 why should not this answer serve for the watch as 

 well as for the stone ? why is it not as admissible 

 in the second case as in the first? For this reason, 

 and for no other, viz., that, when we come to inspect 

 the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover 

 in the stone) that its several parts are framed and 

 put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so 

 formed and adju&ted as to produce motion, and 

 that motion so regulated as to point out the hour 

 of the day; that, if the different parts had been 



surrciinding height?, to discover v.lience it had been broken ofT^ 

 or trom what remote region it had been swept hither : he would 

 consider the place Avhere he stood, in reference to the level of the 

 sea or the waters ; and, revolving all these things in his mind, he 

 would be impressed with the conviction, that the surface of the 

 earth had undergone some vast revolution. 



Such natural reflections lead an intelligent person to seek for 

 infonnation in the many beautiful and interesting works on geol- 

 ogy that have been published in our country of late years. And 

 by these he will be led to infer, that the fair scene before him, so 

 happily adapted for the abode of man, was a condition of the earth 

 resulting from many successive revolutions taking place at periods 

 incalculably remote ; and that the variety of mountain and valley, 

 forest and fertile plain, promontory and shalloAv estuary, formed a 

 world suited to his capacities and'enterprise. 



So true is the observation of Sir J. Herschcl, " that the situation 

 of a pebble may afford him evidence of the state of the globe he 

 inhabits myriads of ages ago, before his species became its deni- 

 zens." 



