The Testimony of the Rocks. 83 



period, retaining the leading types of the old forms, but giving 

 them a much lower relative position. The succession of plants is 

 "well and powerfully sketched, especially in the singular parallel- 

 ism between the historical succession and the botanical arrange- 

 ment; and its beating on natural theology is thus stated. 



" Let us then, in grappling with the vast multiplicity of out 

 ■subject, attempt reducing and simplifying it by means of the clas- 

 sifying principle, not simply, however, — again to recur to the 

 remark of the metaphysician, — as an internal principle given us 

 by nature, but as an external piinciple exemplified by nature. Let 

 \is take the organisms of the old geologic periods in the order 

 in which they occur m time ; secure, as has been shown, that if 

 our chronology be correct, our classification will, as a consequence, 

 be good. It will be for the natural theologians of the coming age 

 to show the bearing of this wonderful fact on the progress of man 

 towards the just and the solid, and on the being and character of 

 man's Creator, — to establish, on the one hand, against the undue 

 depredators of intellect and its results, that in certain departments 

 •of mind, such as that which deals with the arrangement and de- 

 velopment of the scheme of organic being, human thought is not 

 profitlessly revolving in an idle circle, but progressing Godwards, 

 and gradually unlocking the order of creation. And, on the other 

 hand, it will be equally his proper business to demand of the Pan- 

 theist how, — seeing that only persons (such as the Cuviers and 

 Lindleys) could have wrought out for themselves the real arrange- 

 ment of this scheme, — how, I say, or on what principle, it is to be 

 held that it was a scheme originated and established at the be- 

 ginning, not by Si personal, but by an ^mpersonal God. But our 

 present business is with the fact of the parallel arrangements, 

 Divine and human, — not with the inferences legitimately deducible 

 from it." 



The second lecture takes a similar view of the history of ani- 

 mals, with the same result, even more strikingly exhibited, in con- 

 sequence of the greater completeness of our knowledge of 

 fossil zoology. This part of the subject affords an admirable field 

 for the descriptive powers of the author, and he makes creation 

 proceed before us in a series of magnificent pictures, which, as he 

 well says, surpass in interest the historic revelations of Egyptian 

 obelisks and Assyrian friezes. 



Then follows the well-known lecture delivered before the Young 

 Men's Christian Association of London, which was at the time the 



