THE GEOLOGIST. 



61 



holy book of Nature, which must ever be read with solemnity and reve- 

 rence, they take their places properly in the great sentences and wonderful 

 passages of that mysterious language from which Geology interprets 

 the order, wisdom, goodness, and prescience displayed in the animated 

 worlds that were. It is thus we shall have attained to the true know- 

 ledge of the value of fossils, when we shall turn from such readings 

 with adoration to the Great Author of all. 



CHAPTER II. 



The Roclcs — their order and their teachings. 



Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the ground on which thou standest 

 is holy." And the ground on which we stand is holy. Holy in its 

 venerable age, and with the impress of Divinity ; and when with 

 solemn reverence we approach the consideration of its eventful history, 

 and the skilfulness of its design, are we less in the presence of God 

 than was the Lawgiver of old standing, with another purpose, before 

 the burning bush ? There is a time for all things — to be gay and to 

 be solemn ; and there will be occasions for a lighter style than we 

 think fit in this place to pen our thoughts. We design not to treat of 

 the value of the rocks nor of their uses, but to draw from them some of 

 those heart-felt lessons which rank amongst the highest efforts and 

 best results of the grand science of the earth. 



We begin with the order of the rocks. Is there skill in the con- 

 struction and organization of our bodies, is there marvellous mystery 

 in the wonderful connection of our corporeal parts with our souls, 

 in the combination of the material with the immaterial, of 

 bodily existence with spiritual existence, of the animate with the in- 

 animate, of senseless matter with the sense -pervaded, sense-pervading, 

 ethereal, and immortal spirit ? Is there less of the mysterious and 

 wonderful in the minute but living monad — anything less incom- 

 prehensible in the living but mind-deficient plant and tree ? Is there 

 not skill and perfection, design, and a sustaining hand visible in all 

 around us ? And is the great globe orderless and chaotic ? No ! 

 The hand that fashioned and created, the great mind that planned and 

 endowed with specialities the living creature of a day or of three-score 



