In reference to these discoveries, the Rev. Professor Sedgwick, in his Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge observes, that, "by the discoveries of a new science (the very name of which has been but a few years engrafted on our language,) we learn, that the manifestations of God's power on the earth have not been limited to the few thousand years of man's existence. The Geologist tells us, by the clearest interpretation of the phenomena which his labours have brought to light, that our globe has been subject to vast physical revolutions. He counts his time not by celestial cycles, but by an index he has found in the solid frame-work of the globe itself. He sees a long succession of monuments, each of which may have required a thousand ages for its elaboration. He arranges them in chronological order, observes in them the marks of skill and wisdom, and finds within them the tombs of the ancient inhabitants of the earth. He finds strange and unlooked for changes in the forms and fashions of organic life, during each of the long periods he thus contemplates. He traces these changes backwards, through each successive era, till he reaches a time when the monuments lose all symmetry, and the types of organic life are no longer He has then entered on the dark age of nature's history; and he closes the old chapter of her records."

seen.

It is not on account of their curious novelty and surpassing interest alone, that the researches of

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VALUE OF GEOLOGY TO RELIGION.

Geology have become so eminently the object of scientific attention and esteem, and have taken so distinguished a position among the most lasting and valued acquisitions of reason and philosophy. Those researches have not merely opened to our view new scenes of wonder and astonishment in the Creator's works; they have not merely announced the occurrence, and acquainted us with the nature, of changes and revolutions, which, in periods too remote for human calculation, affected the globe to whose now comparatively peaceful and fertile surface mankind, and the cotemporary inhabitants of the earth, have succeeded nor have geological researches merely exhibited to us the pre-existing conditions of our planet, when inhabited by various animals of wondrous structure which have long ceased to occupy its surface, and by "plants of which no living species are known;" or merely called from their long repose in stony sepulture, to our own astonished gaze the very generations which lived in periods separated by many thousand years, not only from the present age, but from the very creation of mankind: generations of which, in the poet's language, it may be said,

"A sacred band, comes stealing on."

For it is undoubtedly and incontrovertibly true, that in the fertile and extensive, the previously unexplored and time-hallowed, range for inquiry and contemplation which the researches of Geology have opened in the wonders of the fossil world, a

vast and important sphere is added to the dominion of religion, and thus to the means of human exaltation; and that religion has derived an extension of its empire, and the best confirmation of its truths, among the ruins of ages and creations which preceded the existence of any revelation, in sources independent of the Mosaic writings, unconfined by the limits of existing creation, and extending to systems far earlier than our own; and from sources, therefore, which were the least expected to furnish those results. And the researches of Geology, it has been truly said, are calculated to inspire the most affectionate veneration for that Great Being who has made even the convulsions of the material world subservient to the happiness of His creatures.

Geology can proudly turn to these results; for it has been, and is the glory of its own unrivalled and splendid researches, to trace through the relics of former and now extinct creations, the most convincing proofs of a constantly superintending design; to shew that the organic forms which inhabited the earth "many thousands, and perhaps, tens of thousands of years" before its occupation by man, are connected with the structures which now inhabit its surface by one leading feature-that of similarity in the principle of their construction;—a feature which connects the inhabitants of the globe in most widely separated periods, the intervals between which must be an eternity as compared with the whole past existence of mankind upon the earth,—as parts

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RETROSPECTIVE ETERNITY OF GOD.

of one great plan, and in natural and logical consequence, as creations of the same Almighty hand.

"It is no wonder," observes the Rev. Dr. Smith, "that Geology has risen so high within but the last fifteen years, and has attracted to it the most gifted minds in this and other countries: for it is based upon the evidence of sense, in the laborious and protracted examination of mines, mountain regions, and less dangerous places without number; and it demands, in order to its successful cultivation, an acquaintance with at least the principles of Chemistry, Electricity, Mineralogy, Zoology, Conchology, Comparative Anatomy, and (as the papers of Mr. Hopkins and Sir J. F. Herschel have recently shown) of the sublimest Mathematics. Thus Geology maintains relations with the whole sphere of natural knowledge; and above all it bears a most important reference to Theology and Biblical studies, that we may know truth, and maintain it, against both well meaning believers and ill meaning unbelievers, and may magnify the wondrous works of Him that is perfect in knowledge."

It will be seen, therefore, that to Geology the praise is due, and has been justly awarded, that it has enlarged our idea of the operations of the Deity in respect to duration, in the same degree that Astronomy has done in regard to space; and that it has opened fields of research and contemplation, as wide and as grand as those that Astronomy itself presents to which noble science Sir John Herschel

RELATION TO ASTRONOMY, &c.

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observes, that " Geology, in the magnificence and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, undoubtedly ranks next in the scale of the sciences." And "whilst (in the language of Mr. Lyell, the eminent geologist,) "the discovery of other systems in the boundless regions of space was the triumph of Astronomy, it has been the meed of geological research to trace the same system through various transformations;-to behold it at successive eras adorned with different hills and valleys, lakes and seas, and peopled with new inhabitants:" and moreover to afford us the satisfaction of finding, that while in existing nature we are continually surrounded by evidences of the adaptation of the earth's present surface to the system of animated nature by which it is adorned, we have in the fossil world the means of carrying these evidences of adaptation further. For, as geologists, "we learn, that many former states also, have been equally adapted to the organization and habits of prior races of beings; that the disposition of the seas, continents, and islands, and that the climates also, have varied; that the species of those races likewise have been changed, and yet that they have all been so modelled on types analogous to those of existing plants and animals, as to indicate throughout, a perfect harmony of design and unity of purpose. And if so much interest and instruction attend the cultivation of Natural History and Zoology, the studies that relate to animals co-existent with mankind;