"from
age to age thou art, O God." It has perhaps been a defect of our
modern science that it has familiarized us merely with the existence
of worlds in space, and not with their existence in time. It is only
in comparatively modern times that the developments of chronological
geology and of physical astronomy have brought before us, not only the
long ages in which the earth was passing through its formative stages,
but also the fact that still longer aeons are embraced in the history
of the other bodies of our solar system, and of the starry orbs and
nebulae. These grand conceptions were already embodied in the Hebrew
revelation, and were used there as the means of giving some faint
approach to a conception of the unlimited existence of God himself, of
the ages in which his creative work has been going on, and of the
future life he has prepared for his redeemed people.

Such views of development and progress are not unknown to many ancient
cosmogonies and philosophical systems, but they had no stable
foundation in observed fact until the rise of modern geology and
physical astronomy; which enable us to affirm that, in addition to
those changeless physical laws which cause the bodies of the universe
to wheel in unvarying cycles, and all natural powers to reproduce
themselves, and, in addition to those organic laws which produce
unceasing successions of living individuals, there is a higher law of
progress. We can now trace back man, the animals and plants his
contemporaries, and others which preceded them, our continents and
mountain ranges, and the solid rocks of which they are composed--nay,
the very fabric of the solar system itself--to their several origins
at distinct points of time; and can maintain that since the earth
began to wheel around the sun, no succeeding year has seen it
precisely as it was in the year before. The old Hebrew record affirms,
and I presume scarcely any sane man really doubts, that this law of
progress emanates from the mind and power of one creative Being. When
men see in natural law only recurring cycles, they may be pardoned for
falling even into the absurdity of believing in eternal succession;
but when they see change and progress, and this in a uniform
direction, overmastering recurring cycles, and introducing new objects
and powers not accounted for by previous objects or powers, they are
brought very near to the presence of the Spiritual Creator. And hence,
although no science can