PT. in. Progress and Civilisation. 169 



herence of the different parts, the harmony of the 

 whole, the adaptation of means to an end afford 

 additional proofs of the unity of the design and of 

 the Wisdom, Power, and Goodness of its Great 

 Author. Let us suppose one of the Sages of 

 antiquity, or one of the early Fathers Socrates or 

 St. Chrysostom tracing out or trying to draw the 

 plans of Omnipotence. How scanty and imperfect 

 would have been their materials, how unconscious 

 they would have been of all the manifestations of 

 the Deity displayed in the Solar System ; how 

 ignorant of the wonders of chemical and mechanical 

 Science, and of their applicability to the wants of 

 Man ; how ignorant of the Geography and of the 

 various conditions of this globe itself ; how totally 

 unacquainted with all the secrets of antecedent 

 states of the Earth which Geology dimly and 

 imperfectly reveals to us how difficult for them 

 to have proved the vast capabilities of Man, or his 

 steady progress to a higher grade in the scale of the 

 Creation, which his acquirements during between 

 two and three thousand years have proved. Even 

 Paley, writing so near our own times that he is 

 almost a contemporary, wanted the proofs in favour 

 of his principles of Natural Theology which these 



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