m 



ON GEOLOGY, 



readily learn from these lectures, however imperfectly delivered, and which 

 is altogether of a moral character : I mean that of humility in regard to 

 our own opinions and attainments ; and of complacency, in regard to those 

 of others. After a revolution of six thousand years, during the whole of 

 which period of time the restless ingenuity of man has been incessantly 

 hunting in pursuit of knowledge, what is there in physical philosophy that 

 is thoroughly and perfectly known even at the present moment ? and of the 

 little that is thus known, what is there which has been acquired without 

 the clash of controversy, and the warfare of opposing speculations ? Truth, 

 indeed, — for ever praised be the great Source of Truth, for so eternal and 

 immutable a decree— has at all times issued, and at all times will issue, from 

 the conflict ; but while we behold philosophers of the ^hest reputation, 

 philosophers equally balanced in the endowment of native genius, proved 

 by the great teacher Time to have been alternately mistaken upon points 

 to which they had honestly directed the whole acumen of their intellect, 

 how absurd, how contemptible is the fond confidence of common life 

 Yet what indeed, when fairly estimated by the survey that has now been 

 briefly taken of the sensible universe, — what is the aggregate opinion, or 

 the aggregate importance of the whole human race ! We call ourselves 

 lords of the visible creation : nor ought we at any time, with affected abjec- 

 tion, to degrade or despise the high gift of a rational and immortal exist- 

 ence. — Yet, what is the visible creation ? by whom peopled ? and where 

 are its entrances and outgoings ? Turn wherever we will we are equally 

 confounded and overpowered : the little and the great are ahke beyond our 

 comprehension. If we take the microscope it unfolds to us, as I observed 

 in our last lecture, living beings probably endowed with as complex and 

 perfect a structure as the whale or the elephant, so minute that a million 

 of millions of them do not occupy a bulk larger than a common grain of 

 sand. If we exchange the microscope for the telescope, we behold man 

 himself reduced to a comparative scale of almost infinitely smaller dimen- 

 sion, fixed to a minute planet that is scarcely perceptible throughout the 

 vast extent of the solar system ; while this system itself forms but an insen- 

 sible point in the multitudinous marshallings of groups of worlds upon 

 groups of worlds, above, below, and on every side of us, that spread through 

 / all the immensity of space, and in sublime, though silent harmony declare 



the glory of God, and show forth his handy-work. 



LECTURE VL 



ON GEOLOGY. 



There are some subjects on which the philosopher is obliged to exercise 

 nearly as much imagination as the poet ; for it is the only faculty by which 

 he can expatiate upon them. Such is a great part of the magnificent study 

 upon which we have touched in our preceding lectures. — Space, immensity, 

 infinity, pure incorporeal intelligence, matter created out of nothing, innu- 

 merable systems of worlds, and innumerable orders of beings ;— where is 

 the mind strong enough to grapple with such ideas as these ? They at once 

 entice and overwhelm us. Reason copes with them till she is exhausted, 

 and then gives as over to conjecture. Hence, as we have already seen. 



