14 Notice of the Wonders of Geology. 



satisfactory data as to any antecedent period. In no department 

 of natural science is the admirable caution of the philosopher 

 more necessary than in geology — ' that we should remember, 

 knowledge is a temple, of which the vestibule only has been en- 

 tered, and we know not what is contained within those hidden 

 chambers, of which the experience of the past can afford us nei- 

 ther analogy nor clue.' 



" Final Causes. — Geology, then, does not affect to disclose the 

 first creation of animated nature ; it does not venture to assume 

 that we have physical evidence of a beginning ; it does not war- 

 rant the attempt to explain the miraculous inter positio7is of Provi- 

 dence, by the operation of natural laws ; but it unfolds to us a 

 succession of events, each so vast as to be beyond our finite com- 

 prehension, yet the last as evidently foreseen as the first. It in- 

 structs us, ' that we are placed in the middle of a scheme — not 

 a fixed but a progressive one — every way incomprehensible ; in- 

 comprehensible in a measure equally with respect to what has 

 been, what now is, and what shall be hereafter.'* 



" The new page in the volume of natural religion which ge- 

 ology has supplied, has been so fully illustrated by Dr. Buckland, 

 in his celebrated Essay, that I need not dwell at length on the 

 evident and beautiful adaptation of the organization of number- 

 less living forms, through the lapse of indefinite periods of time, 

 to every varying physical condition of the earth, and by which 

 its surface was ultimately fitted for the abode of the human race. 

 We have seen that the infusoria lived and died in countless my- 

 riads, and furnished the tripoli and the opal — that river-snails and 

 sea-shells elaborated the marble for our temples and palaces, and 

 polyparia the limestone of which our edifices are constructed ; and 

 that grass, herb, and tree, have been converted either into mate- 

 rials to enrich the soil, or a mineral which should serve as fuel in 

 after ages, when such a substance became indispensable to the 

 necessities and luxuries of civilized man. Thus it is that geol- 

 ogy has thrown a new interest around every grain of sand, and 

 every blade of grass ; and that the pebble, rejected by the moral- 

 ist and the divine,f becomes in the hands of the philosopher a 

 striking proof of Infinite Wisdom. 



* Bishop Butler. 



t Paley. The remark alludes to the celebrated argument of this distinguished 

 author. 



