614 



GEOLOGY. 



The time is happily going by, for aspersions to be cast upon the geologist, as if he were 

 pursuing an unprofitable employment, or 



" Had learned the art that none might name, 

 In Padua, far beyond the sea." 



A fair comparison between the objects of his attention, and many of those which occupy 

 their busy thought by day, and fevered dreams by night, who have pronounced his wisdom 

 folly, would turn the tables upon his censors, and prove that folly must be assigned to 

 them; while an enlightened use of his mental faculties, and means of knowledge, must be 

 attributed to him. To visit a bed of chalk, a sandstone quarry, an erratic block, or an 

 ossiferous cavern to pick up shells, pore over a fossil, chip off portions of rocks, and 

 store away the ungainly fragments in a cabinet to examine the structure of strata, their 

 dislocations, dip, and organic remains to ascertain the aqueous or igneous origin of the 

 vast mineral masses overlying the globe to detect the substances which inhere in the 

 composition of the earth's surface, simple or combined, and become familiar with gneiss, 

 hornblende, felspar, quartz, mica-slate, and the carbonate of lime, which gives marble to 



the statuary these may seem, to the superficial observer, 

 occupations barren alike of interest and profit, yielding 

 only insipidity and toil to those who engage in them. 

 But, in reality, they have relations which bring the in- 

 quirer into immediate contact with some of the grandest 

 movements of Providence in this lower world : they may 

 lead him, by a strict process of ratiocination, to results 

 which will proclaim to his inward consciousness, that 

 a wise and mighty Potentate " sits upon the circle of 

 the earth," and that man, who is capable of " feeling 

 after Him," is " of subtler essence than the trodden clod :" 

 they may be so conducted as to minister to the repose of 

 his mind upon Him whose workmanship is investigated, 

 and impress it with those sentiments of humility and awe 

 which are so beneficial in their influence, yet so soon 

 effaced amid the bustle of this life's customary labours. It 

 is assuming what remains to be proved, to say that it is 

 in the vagueness of mere curiosity, or in the vanity of 

 human nature, that the geologist looks abroad upon ter- 

 restrial phenomena, recurring to periods in the past far 

 removed from the present era, and to events which appear 

 to have no direct bearing upon our existing condition and 

 wants. He is a part of the vast scheme of being which he 

 seeks to explore. He indulges intellectual appetencies, 

 which have been given him by the Father of spirits : he 

 takes the faculty to observe, admire, and partially compre- 

 hend, into a field furnished with impressive evidences of 

 Divine power, intelligence, and goodness ; and the spec- 

 tacle presented to his attention is a sublime one, and has 

 its lessons of religious faith and practice to teach. The 

 rudest stocks and stones that peep out of the greensward with which the soil is covered the 

 remains of organic life that have been buried from the light of heaven for countless ages, 

 from the colossal megatherium to the microscopic infusoria from delicate mosses to stately 

 coniferae bear witness to a Creator, and to animal and vegetable tribes with marvellous 



Castalian Spring. 



