UNITY OP THE DEITY, 435 



enlarged the range of Facts in accordance with those on 

 which Paley grounded this assertion. 



In all the numerous examples of Design which we have 

 selected from the various animal and vegetable remains, 

 that occur in a fossil state, there is such a never-faihng Iden- 

 tity in the fundamental principles of their construction, and 

 sucii uniform adoption of analogous means, to produce va- 

 rious ends, with so much only of departure from one com- 

 mon type of mechanism, as was requisite to adapt each in- 

 strument to its own especial function, and to fit each Species 

 to its pecuUar place and office in the scale of created Beings, 

 that we can scarcely fail to acknowledge in all these facts, 

 a Demonstration of the Unity, of the Intelligence, in which 

 such transcendent Harmony originated ; and we may almost 

 dare to assert that neither Atheism nor Polytheism would 

 ever have found acceptance in the World, had the evidences 

 of high Intelligence and of Unity of Design, which are dis- 

 closed by modern discoveries in physical science, been fully 

 known to the Authors, or the Abettors of Systems to which 

 tliey are so diametrically opposed. " It is the same hand- 

 writing that we read, the same system and contrivance that 

 we trace, the same unity of object, and relation to final 

 causes, which we see maintained throughout, and constantly 

 proclaiming the Unity of the great divine Original.* 



It has been stated in our Sixth Chapter, on primary stra- 

 tified rocks, that Geology has rendered an important ser- 

 vice to Natural Theology, in demonstrating by evidences 

 pecuHar to itself, that there was a time when none of the 

 existing forms of organic beings had appeared upon our 

 Planet, and that the doctrines of the derivation of living spe- 

 cies either by Development and Transmutation] from other 



* Biickland's Inaug. Lect. 1819, p. 13. 



f As a misunderslanding may arise in the minds of persons not familiar 

 with the language of physiology, respecting the import of the word De. 

 velopment, it may be proper here to state, that in its primary sense, it is 

 applied to express the organic changes which take place in the bodies of 

 erery animal and vegetable Being, from their embryo state, until they ar- 



