CHAPTER XXIV.

Conclusion.

IN our last Chapter we have considered the Nature of the Evidence afforded by unorganized mineral bodies, in proof of the existence of design in the original adaptation of the material Elements to their various functions, in the inorganic and organic departments of the Natural World, and have seen that the only sufficient Explanation we can discover, of the orderly and wonderful dispositions of the material Elements "in measure and number and weight," throughout the terraqueous globe, is that which refers the origin of every thing above us, and beneath us, and around us, to the will and workings of One Omnipotent Creator. If the properties imparted to these Elements at the moment of their Creation, adapted them beforehand to the infinity of complicated useful purposes, which they have already answered, and may have further still to answer, under many successive Dispensations in the material World, such an aboriginal constitution so far from superseding an intelligent Agent, would only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and power, that could comprehend

such an infinity of future uses under future systems, in the original groundwork of his Creation.

In an early part of our Enquiry, we traced back the history of the Primary rocks, which composed the first solid materials of the Globe, to a probable condition of universal Fusion, incompatible with the existence of any forms of organic life, and saw reason to conclude that as the crust of the Globe became gradually reduced in temperature, the unstratified crystalline rocks, and stratified rocks produced by their destruction, were disposed and modified, during long periods of time, by physical forces, the same in kind with those which actually subsist, but more intense in their degree of operation; and that the result has been to adapt our planet to become the receptacle of divers races of vegetable and animal beings, and finally to render it a fit and convenient habitation for Mankind.

We have seen still further that the surface of the Land, and the Waters of the Sea have during long periods, and at distant intervals of time, preceding the Creation of our species, been peopled with many different races of Vegetables and Animals, supplying the place of other races that had gone before them; and in all these phenomena, considered singly, we have found evidence of Method and Design. We have moreover seen such a systematic recurrence of analogous Designs, producing various ends by

various combinations of Mechanism, multiplied almost to infinity in their details of application, yet all constructed on the same few common fundamental principles which pervade the living forms of organized Beings, that we reasonably conclude all these past and present contrivances to be parts of a comprehensive and connected whole, originating in the Will and Power of one and the same Creator.

Had the number or nature of the material Elements appeared to have been different underformer conditions of the Earth, or had the Laws which have regulated the phenomena of inorganic matter, been subjected to change at various Epochs, during the progress of the many formations of which Geology takes cognizance, there might indeed have been proofs of Wisdom and Power in such unconnected phenomena, but they would have been insufficient to demonstrate the Unity and Universal Agency of the same eternal and supreme First Cause of all things.

Again, had Geology gone no further than to prove the existence of multifarious examples of Design, its evidences would indeed have been decisive against the Atheist; but if such Design had been manifested only by distinct and dissimilar systems of Organization, and independent Mechanisms, connected together by no analogies, and bearing no relations to one another, or to any existing types in the Animal or Vegetable king

doms, these demonstrations of Design, although affording evidence of Intelligence and Power, would not have proved a common origin in the Will of one and the same Creator; and the Polytheist might have appealed to such non-accordant and inharmonious systems, as affording indications of the agency of many independent Intelligences, and as corroborating his theory of a plurality of Gods.

But the argument which would infer an Unity of cause, from unity of effects, repeated through various and complex systems of organization widely remote from each other in time and place and circumstances, applies with accumulative force, when we not only can expand the details of facts on which it is founded, over the entire surface of the present world, but are enabled to comprehend in the same category all the various extinct forms of many preceding systems of organization, which we find entombed within the bowels of the Earth. It was well observed by Paley, respecting the variations we find in living species of Plants and Animals, in distant regions and under various climates, that "We never get amongst such original or totally different modes of Existence, as to indicate that we are come into the province of a different Creator, or under the direction of a different Will."* And the very

* Paley Nat. Theol. p. 450. Chap. on the Unity of the Deity.

extensive subterranean researches that have more recently been made, have greatly enlarged the range of Facts in accordance with those on which Paley grounded this assertion.

In all the numerous examples of Design which we have selected from the various animal and vegetable remains, that occur in a fossil state, there is such a never failing Identity in the fundamental principles of their construction, and such uniform adoption of analogous means, to produce various ends, with so much only of departure from one common type of mechanism, as was requisite to adapt each instrument to its own especial function, and to fit each Species to its peculiar place and office in the scale of created Beings, that we can scarcely fail to acknowledge in all these facts, a demonstration of the Unity of the Intelligence, in which such transcendant Harmony originated; and we may almost dare to assert that neither Atheism nor Polytheism would ever have found acceptance in the World, had the evidences of high Intelligence and of Unity of Design, which are disclosed by modern discoveries in physical science, been fully known to the Authors, or the Abettors of Systems to which they are so diametrically opposed. opposed. "It is the same hand writing that we read, the same system and contrivance that we trace, the same unity of object, and relation to final causes, which we see maintained throughout,