er limits,--he refuses to acquiesce
in the unfounded inference of Pope. In order to prove the absurdity of
"man's conceiting himself the final cause of creation," proof of an
ulterior cause,--of a higher end and aim,--must he adduced; and of aught
higher than man, the geologist, as such, knows nothing. The long vista
opened up by his science closes with the deputed lord of creation,--with
man as he at present exists; and when, casting himself full upon
revelation, the vail is drawn aside, and an infinitely grander vista
stretches out before him into the future, he sees man--no longer,
however, the natural, but the Divine man--occupying what is at once its
terminal point and its highest apex. Such are some of the bearings of
geologic science on the science of natural theology. Geology has
disposed effectually and forever of the oft-urged assumption of an
infinite series; it deals as no other science could have dealt with the
assertion of the skeptic, that creation is a "singular effect;" it casts
a flood of unexpected light on the somewhat obsolete plausibilities of
Bolingbroke and Jenyns, that exhibits their utterly unsolid character;
yet further, it exhibits in a new aspect the argument founded on design,
and invests the place and standing of man in _creation_ with a peculiar
significancy and importance, from its relation to the future. But on
this latter part of my subject--necessarily of considerable extent and
multiplicity, and connected rather with revealed than with natural
religion--I must not now expatiate. I shall, however, attempt laying
before you, on some future evening, a few thoughts on this portion of
the general question, which you may at least find suggestive of others,
and which, if they fail to elicit new truths, may have the effect of
opening up upon an old truth or two a few fresh avenues through which to
survey them. The character of man as a fellow-worker with his Creator in
the material province has still to be considered in the light of
geology. Man was the first, and is still the only creature of whom we
know anything, who has set himself to carry on and improve the work of
the world's original framer,--who is a planter of woods, a tiller of
fields, and a keeper of gardens,--and who carries on his work of
mechanical contrivance on obviously the same principles as those on
which the Divine designer wrought of old, and on which he works still.
It may not be wholly unprofitable to acquaint ourselves