2/0 
to mark their dependence, and lastly, to infer the purposes, and 
motives, which influenced the Creator, in making this particular 
arrangement. Without such circumspection, there would be danger 
lest, measuring the wisdom of God, by the scale of human in- 
tellect, inferences derogatory to the divine dignity might be made ; 
and plans and contrivances be imputed to the Divinity, not only 
unworthy of omniscience, but originating only in misconception and 
presumption. 
But, it is hoped, that hypothesis which supposes the trans- 
mutation of vegetable matter into bitumen and coal, possesses the 
internal evidence of truth, since it presents to us a scheme, agreeable 
to the phenomena we observe, and in which the economy of nature 
is exercised, in a manner the most agreeable to the ideas we entertain 
of a beneflcent Providence. 
Delightful indeed must have been the scene, which the earth must 
have every where presented, immediately before the deluge. Every 
hill and valley must have been clothed with luxuriant vegetation. 
But the moment of apparent destruction arrives : the lofty forests, 
with which nearly the whole of the earth is supposed to have been 
covered, are at once levelled : a world, which just before was Elysium, 
is desolated, and rendered one vast mass of seeming ruin. Torn up 
and carried away, by the force of the tremendous torrent, the trees of 
the mountains are laid on those of the valleys, and are together buried 
by the subsequent subversion of the mountains themselves. Re- 
flecting on such a scene of desolation, unproductive of any evident 
good, the mind hesitates, and feels a painful dissatisfaction at being 
unable to imagine the origin of such a mass of evil, without de- 
preciating the wisdom, or the power of the Creator. 
It is not, indeed, for me, deeply to agitate the abstruse and im- 
portant question which is here involved ; but permit me to observe, 
that when the power, the wisdom, or the benevolence of God, appears 
to be deficient, the defect will ever be found in the powers of ob- 
