PREPARATORY CHARACTER. 
129 
among the plants of the present world. 
They afford us a new illustration of the 
grandeur of the scale on which preparations 
were made for the great epochs when ‘^The 
Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground^ and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life; and man became a living 
souir^ 
'‘And surely it must be gratifying thus to 
see a science formerly classed^ and not 
perhaps unjustly, among the most pernicious 
to faith, once more become her handmaid; 
to see her now, after so many years of 
wandering from theory to theory, or rather 
from vision to vision, return once more to 
the home where she was born, and to the 
altar at which she made her first simple 
offerings; no longer as she first went forth, 
a wilful, dreamy, empty-handed child, but 
with a matronly dignity, and a priest-like 
step, and a bosom full of well-earned gifts, 
to pile upon its sacred hearth”^ 
The conelusions to which we are led by 
* Gen. ii. 7. 
t Wiseman’s Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion. 
