434 "UNITY OF THE DEITY* 



phenomena, but they would have been insufficient to demon* 

 strate the Unity and Universal Agency of the same eternal 

 and supreme First Cause of all things. 



Again, had Geology gone no farther than to prove the 

 existence of multifarious examples of Design, its evidences 

 would indeed have been decisive against the Atheist ; but if 

 such Design had been manifested only by distinct and dissi- 

 milar systems of Organization, and independent Mechanisms, 

 connected together by no analogies, and bearing no relations 

 to one another, or to any existing types in the Animal or 

 Vegetable kingdoms, these demonstrations of Design, al- 

 though affording evidence of Intelligence and Power, would 

 not have proved a common origin in the Will of one and 

 the same Creator ; and the Polytheist might have appealed 

 to such non-accordant and inharmonious systems, as afford- 

 ing indications of the agency of many independent Intelli- 

 gences, and as corroborating his theory of a plurality of 

 Gods. 



But the argument which would infer a Unity of cause, 

 from unity of effects, repeated through various and complex 

 systems of organization widely remote from each other in 

 time and place and circumstances, applies with accumula- 

 tive force, when we not only can expand the details of facts 

 on which it is founded, over the entire surface of the present 

 world, but are enabled to comprehend in the same catagory 

 all the various extinct forms of many preceding systems of 

 organization, which we find entombed within the bowels of 

 the Earth. It was well observed by Paley, respecting the 

 variations we find in living species of Plants and Animals, 

 in distant regions and under various climates, that "We 

 never get amongst such original or totally different modes 

 of Existence, as to indicate that we are come into the pro- 

 vince of a different Creator, or under the direction of a dif- 

 ferent Will."* And the very extensive subterranean re- 

 searches that have more recently been made, have greatly 



» Paley Nat. Theol. p. 450. Chap, on the Unity of the Deity. 



