NATURAL THEOLOGY. 23 



against them. Nor would it be much better, if the 

 trepidation of our pole, taking an opposite course, 

 should place us under the heats of a vertical sun. 

 But if it would fare so ill with the human inhabi- 

 tant, who can live under greater varieties of lati- 

 tude than any other animal ; still more noxious 

 would this translation of climate have proved to 

 life in the rest of the creation ; and, most perhaps 

 of all, in plants. The habitable earth, and its beau- 

 tiful variety, might have been destroyed by a sim- 

 ple mischance in the axis of rotation.' 



'' (Note of Bishop Brinkley.) Either the earth was ereated a 

 soUd, an oblate spheroid, as it now exists, or it must have taken 

 its present form while a soft or fluid mass. In the former case, the 

 argument for design arising from the body revolving on a perma- 

 nent axis of rotation is of the strongest possible nature. But the 

 present extended knoAvledge of geology has rendered it highly 

 probable that the earth was originally an ignited mass in a state 

 of fluidity, ignited to the very surface, and by its rotation in that 

 state took its present form as the result of the mutual attraction 

 of its parts and of its rotatory motion. This must be conceded if 

 we do not admit the choice of a permanent axis of rotation. It is, 

 Iherefore, in the progress through countless ages of the changes 

 on the surface, from the chaotic or primary formation of the geo- 

 logists to the most interesting state of the surface as it now exists, 

 that we trace the endless arguments for design. However diffi- 

 cult at first sight to be explained, these changes will, when under- 

 stood, show one uniform system, in which all things work toge- 

 ther for good. 



If we consider the state of the surface before its cooling in a 

 great degree, it must have been wholly unfitted for animal and 

 vegetable life. The admission of this state necessarily lets in the 

 posterior and successive creation of vegetables and animals. From 

 the vestiges which remain we may conclude, with the highest de- 

 gree of probability, that for a very long period the surface was 



