of Geology. A
century ago there was none. Science went out to look for it, and brought
back a Geology which, if Nature were a harmony, had falsehood written
almost on its face. It was the Geology of Catastrophism, a Geology so
out of line with Nature as revealed by the other sciences, that on _a
priori_ grounds a thoughtful mind might have been justified in
dismissing it as a final form of any science. And its fallacy was soon
and thoroughly exposed. The advent of modified uniformitarian principles
all but banished the word catastrophe from science, and marked the birth
of Geology as we know it now. Geology, that is to say, had fallen at
last into the great scheme of Law. Religious doctrines, many of them at
least, have been up to this time all but as _catastrophic_ as the old
Geology. They are not on the lines of Nature as we have learned to
decipher her. If any one feel, as Science complains that it feels, that
the lie of things in the Spiritual World as arranged by Theology is not
in harmony with the world around, is not, in short, scientific, he is
entitled to raise the question whether this be really the final form of
those departments of Theology to which his complaint refers. He is
justified, moreover, in demanding a new investigation with all modern
methods and resources; and Science is bound by its principles not less
than by the lessons of its own past, to suspend judgment till the last
attempt is made. The success of such an attempt will be looked forward
to with hopefulness or fearfulness just in proportion to one's
confidence in Nature--in proportion to one's belief in the divinity of
man and in the divinity of things. If there is any truth in the unity of
Nature, in that supreme principle of Continuity which is growing in
splendor with every discovery of science, the conclusion is foregone. If
there is any foundation for Theology, if the phenomena of the Spiritual
World are real, in the nature of things they ought to come into the
sphere of Law. Such is at once the demand of Science upon Religion and
the prophecy that it can and shall be fulfilled.

The Botany of Linnaeus, a purely artificial system, was a splendid
contribution to human knowledge, and did more in its day to enlarge the
view of the vegetable kingdom than all that had gone before. But all
artificial systems must pass away. None knew better than the great
Swedish naturalist himself that his system, being artificial, was but
provisional. Natur