PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
265 
11 The philosophic mmd, in contemplating these triumphs of Man s noblest 
powers, discovers a wonderful and mysterious relation established by his adorable 
Creator, between the material universe and his intellectual nature; the noble 
faculties of his mind, which are his highest and best gifts, and the sources of his 
purest and most exalted feelings, have been conferred upon him for cultivation * 
the prospective design of their education ; the grand final cause of their confer¬ 
ment, was to constitute him what he is, a moral, intellectual, and religious being; 
the great object of whose existence ought to be adoration and duty to his God, 
and love to his fellow men. 
“ The wonderful mechanism of the universe, the grandeur and surpassing 
beauty every where displayed in the external world, kindle in his mind a thirst 
for inquiry, and arouse to action his noblest faculties ; the planet we inhabit, by 
a long series of eventful changes, is sumptuously stored and wonderfully provided 
for the reception of our species, and every thing is formed in the strictest relation 
to our nature, and all admirably adapted to call forth the slumbering energies of 
intellectual powers, and afford Man the fullest scope for exercise of his proud 
prerogative-reason, 
“ That the study of the truths of science should in any way be supposed to be 
at all calculated to lead the mind astray from its first and most sacred duties,—> 
worship to God , and the contemplation of His revealed Word with all its sub¬ 
limities, and assurance of a life of peace and rest beyond the grave,—is a paradox 
that I humbly confess myself incapable of comprehending; for what (let me 
inquire) are the arrangements of the universe, but the expression of the will of 
their Almighty Architect ?-—what the discoveries of science, but a superficial 
knowledge of those laws by which the fiat of Omnipotence is maintained ? Let 
not, therefore, our ardent pursuit of truth be checked by any false fears that we 
may penetrate too deeply into the hidden mysteries of Nature; for, believe me, 
in all such investigations, if conducted with an anxious desire to behold truth in 
all its loveliness, and to develope those mysterious faculties of the mind which it 
has pleased a Bountiful Providence to confer upon us, and with an humble heart 
to read Nature’s vast volume so liberally thrown open for our instruction, is, next 
to the worship of its Divine Author, an intellectual duty worthy of the heirs 
of immortality the performance of which calls into healthy activity the soul’s 
noblest powers, and leads to more lofty conceptions—more sublime contemplations 
of their glorious and beneficial Author.” 
Referring next to the wonders recently brought to light by the study of Fossil 
Zoology, the lecturer continued—“Were a superficial observer told that the 
stone, which records the memory of some dear departed friend, was itself the 
silent monument left by myriads of animals, whose calcareous parts were incor¬ 
porated with its constituent particles at the time the rock itself was forming at 
