"shadows of better things to come." The advent of man simply as such was the great event perfigured during the old geologic ages. The advent of that Divine Man "who hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light," was the great event prefigured during the historic ages. It is these two grand events, equally portions of one sublime scheme, originated when God took counsel with himself in the depths of eternity, that bind together past, present, and future, the geologic with the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian ages, and all together with that new heavens and new earth, the last of many creations, in which there shall be "no more death nor curse, but the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him?"

"There is absurdity," said Pope, "in man's conceiting himself the final cause of creation." Unless, however, man had the entire scheme of creation before him, with the further partially known scheme of which but a part constitutes the grand theme of revelation, how could he pronounce on the absurdity? The knowledge of the geologist ascends no higher than man. He sees all nature in the pre-Adamic past, pointing with prophetic finger towards him; and on even the argument of Hume,just and solid within its proper 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 be 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, through evidence furnished by the rocks, with the remarkable fact, that the Creator imparted to man the Divine image before he united to man's the Divine nature.

LECTURE SIXTH.

GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES.

PART II.

Up till the introduction of man upon our planet, the humbler creatures, his predecessors, formed but mere figures in its various landscapes, and failed to alter or affect by their works the face of nature. They were conspicuous, not from what they did, but from what they were. At a very early period reefs of coral, the work of minute zoophytes, whitened the shallows of the ocean, or encircled with pale, ever broadening frames, solitary islands green with the shrubs and trees of extinct floras; but, though products of the animal world, they were not built up under the direction of even an instinctive intelligence, but were as entirely the results of a vegetative process of mere growth as the forests or reed brakes of the old Carboniferous savannahs. At a later time an ant hill might be here and there descried, rearing its squat, brown pyramid amid the recesses of some Oolitic forest; or, in a period still more recent, the dam of the gigantic beaver might be seen extending its minute eye-like circlet of blue amid the windings of some bosky ravine of the Pliocene age; or existing as a little mound-skirted pond, with the rude half-submerged cottage of the creature, its architect, rising beside it, on some rivulet of the Pleistocene. But how inconsiderable such works, compared with the wide extent of prospect in which they were included!

How entirely inconspicuous rather, save when placed in the immediate foreground of the pictures into whose composition they entered! Not until the introduction of man upon earth do we find a creature whose works sensibly affect and modify the aspects of nature. But when man appears, how mighty the change which he effects! Immediately on his creation he takes under his care the vegetable productions of use and show: it becomes his business to keep and dress a garden. He next becomes a tiller of fields, then a planter of vineyards: here he cuts down great forests; there he rears extensive woods. He makes himself places of habitation; and busy cities spring up as the trophies of his diligence and skill. His labors, as they grow upon the waste, affect the appearance of vast continents; until at length, from many a hill-top and tall spire, scarce a rood of ground can be seen on which he has not built, or sown, or planted, or around which he has not erected his walls or reared his hedges. Man, in this great department of industry, is what none of his predecessors upon the earth ever were, "a fellow-worker" with the Creator. He is a mighty improver of creation. We recognize that as improvement which adapts nature more thoroughly to man's own necessities and wants, and renders it more pleasing both to his sense of the æsthetic and to his more material senses also. He adds to the beauty of the flowers which he takes under his charge, -to the delicacy and fertility of the fruits; the seeds of the wild grasses become corn beneath his care; the green herbs grow great of root or bulb, or bulky and succulent of top and leaf; the wild produce of nature sports under his hand; the rose and lily broaden their disks and multiply their petals; the harsh green crab swells out into a delicious golden-rinded apple, streaked with crimson; the productions of his kitchen garden, strangely metamorphosed to serve the