2 INTRODUCTION. 



profoundest judgment, the widest view, embrace ? It is as nothing ; it 

 is as less than nothing. We are capable of doing no more than survey- 

 ing the edifice and adoring the Architect. 



We behold the superficies only. 



But all is in harmonious arrangement, evidently the offspring of a 

 Creative Power, exercised at an epoch which has vanished in eternity ; 

 yet devised for preserving perpetual order inviolate, and renewed inces- 

 santly in remembrance by images of the original truth. 



It has pleased the Great Creator to combine the gross and brutish 

 matter of the world with the refined ethereal principle of animal life. By 

 their union, the grandeur of his plans is discovered, and by their presence 

 in ourselves, like a secret inspiration, they awaken the consciousness of 

 its excellence. Were the two elements separate, we should be incapable 

 of pronouncing on the power, the influence, and effect of each. Their 

 indefinable incorporation in our own persons renders us sentient beings, 

 and capable of surveying the surrounding scenes, as well as of reverting, 

 by retrospective conjecture, to the incidents of the Creation. 



It must be, nevertheless, a most imperfect view : for, how vast a 

 proportion of the animated world remains concealed from the inquisitive 

 eyes of mankind ; something by distance, something by tenuity, some- 

 thing by interception, or by the mere imperfection of our personal organ*. 



A multitude of questions and doubts at once obtrude themselves on 

 the mind, apparently reasonable as the suggestions of truth, whereof there 

 seem no data for solution. We, the humble tenants of the earth, may 

 presume to speculate on that which is known to the Omnipotent alone, 

 whose intelligence we see has been directed solely to beneficial purposes. 



All in the beginning is hidden, profound, mysterious, an abyss 

 unfathomable. 



When did the Creator reduce to symmetry the chaotic mass, that 

 amidst which the earth was " without form and void," and darkness 

 hung over the deep ; when was it first illuminated by the glorious orbs of 

 the firmament : at what part of its progress, what was its condition, at 

 what epoch of time was the form of man summoned into being, and in- 

 spirited by the breath of life ? 



