16 CONSISTENCY OV GEOLOGICAL 
tainment of such knowledge of the works as 
well as of the ways of God, may perhaps form 
some part of our happiness in a future state ; but 
unless human nature had been constituted other- 
wise than it is, the above supposed communication 
of omniscience would have been imparted to crea- 
tures, utterly incapable of receiving it, under any 
past or present moral or physical condition of 
the human race ; and would have been also at 
variance with the design of all God's other dis- 
closures of himself, the end of which has uni- 
formly been, not to impart intellectual but moral 
knowledge. 
Several hypotheses have been proposed, with a 
view of reconciling the phenomena of Geology, 
with the brief account of creation which we find 
in the Mosaic narrative. Some have attempted 
to ascribe the formation of all the stratified 
rocks to the effects of the Mosaic Deluge; an 
opinion which is irreconcileable with the enor- 
mous thickness and almost infinite subdivisions 
of these strata, and with the numerous and regular 
successions which they contain of the remains 
of animals and vegetables, differing more and 
more widely from existing species, as the 
strata in which we find them are placed at 
greater depths. The fact that a large propor- 
tion of these remains belong to extinct ge- 
nera, and almost all of them to extinct species, 
that lived and multiplied and died on or near 
