306 Sir David Brewster’s Address 
with more power than the geologists around me—we find in the 
bosom of the earth written on blocks of marble—the history 
of primeval times, of worlds of life created, aud worlds of life 
destroyed. We find there, in hierogly phic®¥as intelligible as 
those which Major Rawlinson has decipher on the slabs of 
Nineveh, the remains of forests which waved in luxuriance over 
its plains—the very bones of huge once that. took shelter un- 
der their foliage, and of gigantic ile gs poh that trod uncon- 
trolled its plains, the law-givers and the executioners of that 
Inysterious community with which it pleased the Almighty to 
people his epee world;. But though man is but a recent occu- 
nt of the earth, an upstart in the vast chronology of animal 
life, his jai in the Paradise so spray prepared for him is 
not less exciting and. profound. For him it was made, he was 
to be the lord of the new creation, and to him it especially be- 
longs to investigate the wonders it displays apd to learn the 
“lesson which. it réads. But while our interests are thus closely 
‘connected with ‘a surface and the interior of the earth, interests 
of a higher kind are associated with it as a body of the ‘solar sys- 
tem to- whieh w belong. 
The object “of “Gelgy is to unfold the history and explain 
all the the system—perhaps of all the other 
planets of the net ota The laws of matter must be the same 
wherever el . The heat which warms our globe 
radiates distant of the planets, and. the light 
which twinkles in the Temotest star is, in its faa ie 
science which its truths inspire, they would see in every planet 
around them, and in every star above them, the home of immor- 
tal natures—of beings that suffer and of beings that rejoice—of 
souls that are saved and of souls that aré lost. Geology is, there- 
pos the first chapter of astronomy. It describes that galtion of 
solar system which is nearest_and dearest to us,—the cosmo- 
atta observatory, so to speak, from which the astronomer is to 
survey the sidereal universe; where revolving worlds and systems 
of worlds summon him to investigate and adore. There, too, 
_~he obtains the great base lines of the earth’s radius to measure 
the distances and magnitudes of the starry host, and thus to pene- — 
trate by the force of reason into those infinitely distant regions 
But 
where the si ah oe not follow him Astronomy, big - 
though thus s sprung fro e earth, seeks and, finds, like Astrea, — 
@ More congenial Gere fle: Whatever cheers and enlivens 
- our terrestrial pare th- 
radise is derived from the orbs around us. Wi 
Sai eee 
