GEOLOGY AUXILIARY TO THEOLOGY. i>9:i 
passed, of the vast and various changes in organic 
life that have followed one another upon its sur- 
face, and of its multifarious adaptations to the 
support of its present inhabitants, and to the 
physical and moral condition of the Human race. 
These and kindred branches of enquiry, co- 
extensive with the very matter of the globe itself, 
form the proper subject of Geology, duly and 
cautiously pursued, as a legitimate branch of 
inductive science : the history of the Mineral 
kingdom is exclusively its own ; and of the other 
two great departments of Nature, which form the 
Vegetable and Animal kingdoms, the foundations 
were laid in ao:es, whose records are entombed 
in the interior of the Earth, and are recovered 
only by the labours of the Geologist, who in the 
petrified organic remains of former conditions of 
our Planet, deciphers documents of the Wisdom 
in which the world v/as created. 
Shall it any longer then be said, that a science, 
which unfolds such abundant evidence of the 
Being and Attributes of God, can reason- 
ably be viewed in any other light than as the 
efficient Auxiliary and Handmaid of Religion? 
Some few there still may be, whom timidity or 
prejudice or want of opportunity allow not to 
examine its evidence ; who are alarmed by the 
novelty, or surprised by the extent and mag- 
nitude of the views which Geology forces on their 
attention, and who would rather have kept closed 
G. Q Q 
