Wor] AXD SYMBOLS. 401 



he may admire the lovely scene ; but his admiration can never 

 grow into adoration unless he will take the trouble to look 

 behind and study, in some of its details at least, the exquisite 

 system of machinery by which such beautiful results are accom- 

 plished. To him who does this, the sea, with its physical 

 geography, becomes as the main-spring of a watch ; its waters, 

 and its currents, and its salts, and its inhabitants, with their 

 adaptations, as balance-wheels, cogs, and pinions, and jewels. 

 Thus he perceives that they too are according to design, that 

 they are the expression of one thought, a unity with harmonies 

 which One Intelligence, and One Intelligence alone, could utter. 



T. 



The World's Gradation. 



Interpret the various systems of geology in any way what- 

 ever, it still is clear that they all do present a long series of 

 mineral mutations, and of vital gradation and progress. Not 

 progress from imperfection to perfection, but from humbler to 

 more highly organised orders, as if the great design of Nature 

 had been to ascend from the simpler conception of materialism 

 to the higher aims of mechanical combination ; from mechanism 

 to the subtler elimination of mind ; and from mentalism to the 

 still nobler attribute of moralism, as developed alone in the 

 intellect and soul of man. From the lowly sea-weeds of the 

 silurian strata and marsh-plants of the old red sandstone, we 

 rise (speaking in general terms) to the prolific club-mosses, reeds, 

 ferns, and gigantic endogens of the coal-measures ; from these 

 to the palms, cycads, and pines of the oolite ; and from these 

 again to the exogens or true timber-trees of the tertiary and 

 current eras. So also in the animal kingdom : the graptolites 

 and trilobites of the silurian seas are succeeded by the higher 

 Crustacea and bone-clad fishes of the old red sandstone ; these 

 by the sauroid fishes of the coal measures ; the sauroid fishes by 

 the gigantic saurians and reptiles of the oolite ; the reptiles- of 

 the oolite by the huge mammalia of the tertiary epoch ; and these 

 in time give place to existing species, with man as the crowning 

 form of created existence man, whose mental and social history 

 is one of constant progress. This idea of gradation implies not 



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