PROSPECTIVE VIEW TO THE USES OF MAN. 403. 



population, riches, and pov^^er, and of improvement in almost 

 every Art which administers to the necessities and comforts 

 of Mankind. And, however remote may have been the 

 periods, at which these materials of future beneficial dis- 

 pensations were laid up in store, we may fairly assume, 

 that, besides the immediate purposes effected at, or before 

 the time of their deposition in the strata of the Earth, an 

 ulterior prospective view to the future uses of Man, formed 

 part of the design, with which they were, ages ago, dis- 

 posed in a manner so admirably adapted to the benefit of 

 the Human Race. 



CHAPTER XX. 



Proofs of Design in the Effects of Disturbing Forces on the 

 Strata of the Earth. 



In the proofs of the agency of a wise, and powerful, and 

 benevolent Creator ,^ which we have derived from the Ani- 

 mal and Vegetable kingdoms, the evidence has rested chiefly 

 on the prevalence of Adaptations aTtd Contrivances, and of 

 Mechanisms adapted to the production of certain ends, 

 throughout the organic remains of a former world. 



An argument of another kind may be founded on the Or- 

 der, Symmetry, and Constancy, of the Crystalline forms of 

 the unorganized Mineral ingredients of the Earth. But in 

 considering the great geological phenomena which appear 

 in the disposition of the strata, and their various accidents, 

 a third kind of evidence arises from conditions of the earth, 



chinery, which can be kept in action only by the produce of our native 

 Coal Mines, and whose prosperity can never survive the period of their ex- 

 haustion. 



