GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES.
PART II.
Uptill 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 theydid, but from what theywere. 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 avegetativeprocess 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-submergedcottageof 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 lie 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 mightyimproverof 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 naturesportsunder 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 theuses of his table, bear forms unknown to nature; an occult law of change and development inherent to these organisms meets in him with the developing instinct and ability, and they are regenerated under his surveillance. Nor is his influence over many of the animals less marked. The habits which he imparts to the parents becomenature, in his behalf, in their offspring. The dog acquires, under his tutelage, the virtues of fidelity to a master and affection to a friend. The ox and horse learn to assist him in the labors of the fields. The udders of the cow and goat distend beneath his care far beyond the size necessary in the wild state, and supply him with rich milk, and the other various products of the dairy. The fleece of the sheep becomes finer of texture and longer of fibre in his pens and folds; and even the indocile silkworm spins, in his sheltered conservatories, and among the mulberry trees which he has planted, a larger, and brighter, and more glistening cocoon. Man is the great creature-worker of the world,—its one created being, that, taking up the work of the adorable Creator, carries it on to higher results and nobler developments, and finds a field for his persevering ingenuity and skill in every province in which his Maker had expatiated before him. He is evidently—to adopt and modify the remark of Oken—God's image "manifest in the flesh."
Surveyed from the special point of view furnished by this peculiar nature of man, unique in creation, all the past of our planet divides into two periods;—the period, inclusive of every age known to the geologist, during which only the Creator wrought; and the period during which man has wrought, and to which all human history belongs. In such a view we are presented with two sets of works,—those of the Creator-worker, and those of the creature-worker; and the vast fund of materials on which the natural theologianframes his arguments demonstrative of design or contrivance, assumes a new significancy and interest when employed as evidence that there exists a certain correspondence of nature and intellect between the two workers, human and Divine. The ability of accomplishing the same ends by the same means,—in other words, of thinking and acting in the same practical tract,—indicates a similarity, if not identity, of intellectual nature. In the Chinese centre of civilization, for instance, printing, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, with the various chemical and mechanical arts of elegant life, were originated without concert with the European centre of civilization, simply because in China, as in Europe, the same human faculties, prompted by the same tastes and necessities, had expatiated in the same tracts of invention, and had, as a consequence, educed the same results. I was much struck, when spending half an hour in a museum illustrative of the arts in China, by the identity of these with our own, especially in the purely mechanical departments; and again, when similarly employed in that apartment devoted, in the British Museum, to the domestic utensils of the ancient Egyptians. The identity of the more common contrivances which I witnessed, with familiar contrivances in our own country, I regarded as altogether as conclusive of an identity of mind in the individuals who had originated them, as if I had actually seen human creatures at work on them all. One class of productions showed me that the potter's wheel and the turning lathe had been known and employed as certainly in China and ancient Egypt as in Britain. Another, that their weaving processes must have been nearly the same. The Chinese know, for instance, as well as ourselves, that patterns can be delicately brought out,—as in the damasks,—without the assistance of color, simply by exposing silken or flaxen fibre at different angles to the light;and they have fallen, as their work shows, on the right methods of producing it. And the Egyptians anticipated us in even our most homely household contrivances. They even fermented their bread and trussed their fowls after the same fashion; and thus gave evidence, in these familiar matters, that they thought and contrived "after the manner of men." Now, in acquainting myself with the organisms of the geologic periods, I have been similarly but more deeply impressed by what I must be permitted to term thehumancast and character of the contrivances which they exemplified. Not only could I understand the principles on which they were constructed, but further, not a few of them had, I found, been actually introduced into works of human invention ages ere they were discovered in the rock. What the great Creator-worker had originated in the Palæozoic and Secondary periods, had been in after times originated by the little creature-worker, wholly unaware that his contrivance had been anticipated, and was but a repetition of a previously executed design. In the later geologic ages the organization of the various extinct animals so nearly resembled that of the animals which still live, that we may regard it as not inadequately represented by the illustrations of Paley. A few such exceptional contrivances appear among the mammals of the Tertiary as that formed by the huge pickaxe-like tusks of the Dinotherium, or a few such extraordinary modifications of the ordinary mammalian framework as that exhibited in the enormously massive pelvic arches and hinder limbs of the Mylodon and Megatherium. But not until we pass into the deposits of the Secondary period, and get among its cephalopoda, do we find a mechanism altogether unlike any with which we are acquainted among living organisms. As admirably shown by Buckland, the partitions which separate into chambers all the whorls of the ammonite except the outermost one,were exquisitely adapted to strengthen, by the tortuous windings of their outer edges, a shell which had to combine great lightness with great powers of resistance. Itself a continuous arch throughout, it was supported by a series of continuous arches inside, somewhat resembling in form the groined ribs of the Gothic roof, but which, unlike the ponderous stone work of the mediæval architects, were as light as they were strong. And to this combination of arches there was added, in the ribs and grooves of the shell, yet another element of strength,—that which has of late been introduced into iron roofs, which, by means of their corrugations,—ribs and grooves like those of the ammonite,—are made to span over wide spaces, without the support of beams or rafters. Still more recently, the same principle has been introduced into metallic boats, which, when corrugated, like the old ammonites, are found to be sufficiently strong to resist almost any degree of pressure without the wonted addition of an interior framework. Similar evidences of design appear in the other extinct molluscs peculiarto these geologic ages, such as the hamite and turrilite. The belemnite seems to have united the principle of the float to that of the sinker, as we see both united in some of our modern life boats, which are steadied on their keel by one principle, and preserved from foundering by the other; or as we find them united by the boy in his mimic smack, which he hollows out and decks, in order to render it sufficiently light, while at the same time he furnishes it with a keel of lead, in order to render it sufficiently steady. The old articulata abound in marks of ingenious mechanical contrivance. The trilobites were covered over back and head with the most exquisitely constructed plate armor: but as their abdomens seem to have been soft and defenceless, they had the ability of coiling themselves round on the approach of danger, plate moving on plate with the nicestadjustment, till the rim of the armed tail rested on that of the armed head, and the creature presented the appearance of a ball defended at every point. In some genera, as in Calymene, the tail consisted of jointed segments till its termination; in others, as in Illænus, there was a great caudal shield, that in size and form corresponded to the shield which covered the head; the segments of Calymene, from the flexibility of their joints, fitted close to the cerebral rim; while the same effect was produced in the inflexible shields, caudal and cephalic, of Illænus, by their exact correspondence, and the flexibility of the connecting rings, which enabled them to fit together like two equal-sized cymbals brought into contact at every point by the hand. Nor were the ancient crinoids less remarkable for the amount of nice contrivance which their structures exhibited, than the ancient molluscs or crustaceans. In their calyx-like bodies, consisting always of many parts, we find the principle of the arch introduced in almost every possible form and modification, and the utmost flexibility secured to their stony arms by the amazing number of the pieces of which they were composed, and the nice disposition of the joints. In the Pentacrinites of the Secondary period (seeFig. 97) an immense spread of arms, about a thousand in number, and composed of about a hundred thousand separate pieces, had all the flexibility, though formed of solid lime, of adriftof nets, and yet were so nicely jointed, tooth fitting into tooth in all their numerous parts, and the whole so bound together by ligament, that, with all the flexibility, they had also all the toughness and tenacity, of pieces of thread network. Human ingenuity, with the same purposes to effect, that is, the sweeping of shoals of swimming animals into a central receptacle, would probably construct a somewhat similar machine; but it would take half a lifetime to execute one equally elaborate.
Fig. 94.Fig. 94.AMMONITES HUMPHRIESIANUS.(Oolite.)
Fig. 95.Fig. 95.ENCRINITES MONILIFORMIS.(Trias.)Fig. 96.Fig. 96.CUPRESSOCRINUS CRASSUS.(Old Red Sandstone.)
Fig. 95.Fig. 95.ENCRINITES MONILIFORMIS.(Trias.)
Fig. 96.Fig. 96.CUPRESSOCRINUS CRASSUS.(Old Red Sandstone.)
Fig. 97.[21]Fig. 97.PENTACRINUS FASCICULOSUS.(Lias.)
Fig. 98.Fig. 98.a,CHAMFERED SCALES.(Osteolepis.)b,IMBRICATED SCALES.(Glyptolepis.)(Old Red Sandstone.)
In carefully examining, for purposes of restoration, some of the earliest ganoidal fishes, I was not a little impressedby the peculiar mechanical contrivances exhibited in their largely developed dermal skeletons. In some cases these contrivances were sufficiently simple, resembling those which we find exemplified in the humbler trades, originated in comparatively unenlightened ages; and yet their simplicity had but the effect of rendering the peculiarlyhumancast of the mind exhibited in their production all the more obvious. The bony scales which covered fishes such as the Osteolepis and Diplopterus of the Old Red Sandstone, or the Megalichthys of the Coal Measures, were of considerable mass and thickness. They could not, compatibly withmuch nicety of finish, be laid over each other, like the thin horny scales of the salmon or herring; and so we find them curiously fitted together, not like slates on a modern roof, but like hewn stones on an ancient one. There ran on the upper surface of each, along the anterior side and higher end, a groove of a depth equal to half the thickness of the scale; and along the posterior side and lower end, on the under surface, a sort of bevelled chamfer, which, fitting into the grooves of the scales immediately behind and beneath it, brought their surfaces to the same line, and rendered the shining coverings of these strongly armed ganoids as smooth and even as those of the most delicately coated fishes of the present day. In the scales of the Celacanth family the arrangement was different. Though exceedingly massive in some of the genera, they were imbricated, like those ofthe Pangolins; and were chiefly remarkable for the combination of contrivances which they exhibited for securing the greatest possible amount of strength from the least possible amount of thickness. The scales ofHoloptychius giganteusmay be selected as representative of those of the family to which it belonged. It consisted of three plates, or rather, like the human skull, of two solid plates, with adiploeor spongy layer between. The outer surface was curiously fretted into alternate ridges and furrows; and hence the name of the genus,—wrinkled scale; and these imparted to the exterior plate on which they occurred, and which was formed of solid bone, the strength which results from a corrugated or fluted surface. Cromwell, in commissioning a friend to send him a helmet, shrewdly stipulated that it should be a "fluted pot;" and we find that the Holoptychius had got the principle of the fluted pot exemplified in the outer plate of each of its scales, untold ages before. The spongy middle plate must, like the diploe of the skull, have served to deaden the vibrations of a blow dealt from the outside. It was a stratum of sand bags piled up in the middle of a plank rampart. Their innermost table was formed, like the outer, of solid bone, but had a different arrangement. It was properly not one, but several tables, in eachof which the osseous fibres, spread out in the general plane of the scale, lay at a diverse angle from those of the table immediately in contact with it. The principle was evidently that of the double-woven cloth, or cloth of two incorporated layers, such asmoleskin, in which, from the arrangement of the threads, what a draper would term thetearof the one layer or fold lies at a different angle in the general fabric from that of the other. We are thus presented, in a single fossil scale little more than the eighth part of an inch in thickness, with three distinct strengthening principles,—the principle of Cromwell's "fluted pot,"—the principle of a rampart lined with plank, and filled with sand bags in the centre,—and the principle of the double-woven fabrics of the "moleskin" manufacturer.[22]The contrivances exemplified in the cuirass of the Pterichthys were scarce less remarkable. It was formed of bony plates, strongly arched above, but comparatively flat beneath; and along both its anterior and posterior rims a sudden thickening of the plates formed a massive band, which served to strengthen the entire structure, as transverse ribs of stone are found strengthening Gothic vaults of the Norman age. The scale covered tail of the creature issued from within the posterior rim, which formed around it a complete though irregular ring, arched above and depressed beneath; whereas the anterior rim, to which the head was attached, was incomplete when separated from it. It was, in its detached state, an arch wanting the keystone. A keystone, however, projected outwards from the occipital plate of the head; and,as it had to form at once the bond of connection between the cerebral armature of the creature and its cuirass, and to complete the arch formed by the strengthening belt or rib of the latter, it curiously combined the principle of both the dovetail of the carpenter and the keystone of the mason. Viewed from above, it was a dovetail, forming a strong attachment of the head to the body; viewed in the transverse section, it was an efficient keystone, that gave solidity and strength to the arched belt or rib. Both keystone and dovetail are comparatively simple contrivances; but I know not that they have been united in the same piece, save in the very ancient instance furnished by the strong bony plate which connected the helmet of the Pterichthys with its cuirass.
Fig. 99.Fig. 99.SCALE OF HOLOPTYCHIUS GIGANTEUS.(Nat. size.)(Old Red Sandstone.)
Fig. 100.Fig. 100.SECTION OF SCALE OF HOLOPTYCHIUS.(Mag. eight diameters.)
A brief anecdote, yet further illustrative of the framework of this ancient ganoid, may throw some additional light on what I have ventured to term thehumancast of the contrivances exhibited in the organisms of the old geologic ages. After carefully examining many specimens, I published a restoration of both the upper and under side of Pterichthys fully fifteen years ago. The greatest of living ichthyologists, however, misled by a series of specimens much less complete than mine, differed from me in my conclusions; and what I had represented as the creature's under or abdominal side, he represented as its upper or dorsal side; while its actual upper side he regarded as belonging to another, though closely allied, genus. I had no opportunity, as he resided on the Continent at the time, of submitting to him the specimens on which I had founded; though, at once certain of his thorough candor and love of truth, and of the solidity of my data, I felt confident that, in order to alter his decision, it was but necessary that I should submit to him my evidence. Meanwhile, however, the case was regarded assettled against me; and I found at least one popular and very ingenious writer on geology, after referring to my description of the Pterichthys, going on to say that, though graphic, it was not correct, and that he himself could describe it at least more truthfully, if not more vividly, than I had done. And then there followed a description identical with that by which mine had been supplanted. Five years had passed, when one day our greatest British authority on fossil fishes, Sir Philip Egerton, was struck, when passing an hour among the ichthyic organisms of his princely collection, by the appearance presented by a central plate in the cuirass of the Pterichthys. It is of a lozenge form, and, occupying exactly such a place in the nether armature of the creature as that occupied by the lozenge shaped spot on the ace of diamonds, it comes in contact with four other plates that lie around it, and represent, so to speak, the white portions of the card. And Sir Philip now found, that instead of lying over, it lay under, the four contiguous plates: they overlapped it, instead of being overlapped by it. This, he at once said, on ascertaining the fact, cannot be theupperside of the Pterichthys. A plate so arranged would have formed no proper protection to the exposed dorsal surface of the creature's body, as a slight blow would have at once sent it in upon the interior framework; but a proper enough one to the under side of a heavy swimmer, that, like the flat fishes, kept close to the bottom;—a character which, as shown by the massive bulk of its body, and its small spread of fin, must have belonged to the Pterichthys. Sir Philip followed up his observations on the central plate by a minute examination of the other parts of the creature's armature; and the survey terminated in a recognition of the earlier restoration,—set aside so long before,—as virtually the true one;—a recognition in whichAgassiz, when made acquainted with the nature of the evidence, at once acquiesced. Now, here was there a question which had been raised regarding the true mechanism of one of the oldest ganoidal fishes, and settled erroneously on wrong data, again opened up, to be settled anew on one of the most obvious mechanical principles exemplified in the simple art of the slater or tiler. The argument of Sir Philip amounted simply to this:—If the accepted restoration be a true one, then the Creator of the Pterichthys must have committed a mistake in mechanics which an ordinary slater would have avoided; but as the Creator commits no such blunders, the mistake probably occurs in but the restoration. I may mention, that the dorsal surface of this ancient fish had also its central plate,—a lozenge truncated at its two longer ends; and that, moulded to meet the necessities of its position, it was not flat, like the under one, but strongly arched; and that on four of its six sides it overrode by a squamose suture the lower plates with which it came in contact.
These are but humble illustrations of the designing principle, as exhibited of old; and yet they impress none the less strongly on that account. Among the many contrivances of the Chinese Museum, to which I have already referred, none seemed more to excite the curiosity of visitors than a set of tall-backed, elaborately carved chairs, exceedingly like those which were used in our own country two centuries ago, and which Cowper so exquisitely describes. For thousands of miles in the wide tract that spreads out between European Christendom and the great wall, the inhabitants squat upon mats or carpets, or loll on divans; and the contrivance of the chair is unknown: it reappears in China, however, and reappears, not as a mere seat or stool, but as, in every bar and limb, the identical chair of Europe arrested a century or two back in itsdevelopment. And every corresponding tenon and mortise exhibited by the Chinese and European examples of this simple piece of furniture served more forcibly to show an identity of character in the minds which had originated them in countries so far apart, than the more elaborate contrivances which, though illustrative of the same principles of invention, were less easily understood. It is so with the more simple and familiar instances of adaptation furnished by the works of the Creator. We infer from them, more directly than from the complex mechanisms, that he who wrought of old after the manner of a man must have, in his intellectual character, if I may so express myself, certain man-like qualities and traits. In all those works on Natural Theology that treat, like the work of Paley, on the argument of design, the assumption of a certain unity of the intellectual nature of the Creator and creature is made, tacitly at least, the basis of all the reasonings; and it is in the cases in which the design is most simple that the argument is most generally understood. It is in the lowerskirtsof the Divine nature that we most readily trace the resemblance to the nature of man,—an effect, mayhap, of the narrow reach of our faculties in their present infantile state.
Fig. 101.Fig. 101.SIGILLARIA GRŒSERI(Coal Measures.)
Fig. 102.Fig. 102.Fig. 103.Fig. 103.Fig. 104.Fig. 104.WHORLED SHELLS OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE.[23]
Fig. 102.Fig. 102.
Fig. 103.Fig. 103.
Fig. 104.Fig. 104.
But the resemblance is not restricted to the constructive department. Both in the Chinese collection and among the Egyptian antiquities exhibited in the British Museum, I found color as certainly as mechanical contrivance. And the color furnished not only a practical example from both the early and the remote peoples of the same sort of chemical science as exists at the present time among ourselves in our dyeworks and pigment manufactories, but it also showed a certain identity with our own of their sense of beauty. The Chinese satins are gorgeous with green, blue, yellow, scarlet, crimson, and purple, and havefringes heavy with thread of gold. Gilding is as common among this distant people as among ourselves, and at once shows a familiarity with the art of the gold beater, and a sensibility to the beauty of a golden surface; and in the painted ornaments I detected the rich tints of vermilion and crimson lake, with the mineral blues, yellows, and greens. In the Egyptian department, though the blanching influences of three thousand years had dimmed the tints and tarnished the metals, I found evidence of the same regard to hue and lustre as exists still in China and among ourselves; all that now pleases the eye in London and Pekin had pleased it in Thebes during the times of the earlier Pharaohs. And just as we infer from the mechanical contrivances of the Creative-Worker that he possesses a certain identity of mind in theconstructivedepartment with his creature-workers, and this upon the principle on which we infer an identity of mind between the creature-workers of China, ancient Egypt, and our own country, seeing that their works are identical, must we not also infer, on the same principle, that he possesses in theæstheticdepartment a certain identity with them also. True, this region of the beautiful, ever surrounded by an atmosphere of obscure, ill-settled metaphysics, is greatly less clear than that mechanical province of whose various machines, whether of Divine or human contrivance, it can be at least affirmed that machines theyare, and that they effect their purposes by contrivances of the same or of resembling kinds. And yet the appearance in nature, age after age, of the same forms and colors of beauty which man, in gratifying his taste for the lovely in shape and hue, is ever reproducing for himself, does seem to justify our inference of an identity of mind in this province also. The colors of the old geologic organisms, like those of the paintings of ancient Egypt, are greatly faded. A few, however, ofthe Secondary, and even Palæozoic shells, still retain the rich prismatic hues of the original nacre. Many of the Tertiary division still bear the distinctive painted spots. Some of the later fossil fishes, when first laid open in the rock, exhibit the pearly gleam that must of old have lighted up the green depths of the water as they darted through. Not a few of the fossil corals preserve enough of their former color to impart much delicacy of tint to the marbles in which they occur. But it is chiefly in form, not in shade or hue, that we find in the organisms of the geologic ages examples of that beauty in which man delights, and which he is ever reproducing for himself. There is scarce an architectural ornament of the Gothic or Grecian styles which may not be found existing as fossils in the rocks. The Ulodendron was sculptured into gracefully arranged rows of pointed and closely imbricated leaves, similar to those into which the Roman architects fretted the torus of the Corinthian order. The Sigillariawere fluted columns ornately carved in the line of the channelled flutes; the Lepidodendra bore, according to their species, sculptured scales, or lozenges, or egg-like hollows, set in a sort of frame, and relieved into knobs and furrows; all of them furnishing examples of a delicate diaper work, like that so admired in our more ornate Gothic buildings, such as Westminster Abbey, or Canterbury and Chichester Cathedrals, only greatly more exquisite in their design and finish. The scroll shells, a verynumerous section of the class in the earlier ages, such as Maclurea, Euomphalus, Clymenia, and the great family of the ammonites, were volutes of varying proportions, but not less graceful than the ornament of similar proportions so frequently introduced into Greek and Roman architecture, and of which we have such prominent examples in the capitals of the Ionic, Corinthian, and composite orders. In what is known as the modern Ionic the spiral of the volute is not all on one plane; it is a Euomphalus: in the central volutes of the Corinthian the spiral is an open one; it is a Lituite or Gyroceras: in the ancient Ionic it is either wholly flat, as in Planorbus or the upper side of Maclurea, or slightly relieved, as in the ammonites. There is no form of the volute known to the architect which may not be found in the rocks, but there are many forms in the rocks unknown to the architect. Nor are the spire-like shells (seeFig. 105) less remarkable for the rich and varied style of their ornamentation than the whorled ones. They are spires, pinnacles, turrets, broaches; ornate, in some instances, beyond the reach of the architect, and illustrative, in almost all, of his happiest forms and proportions. We detect among the fossils the germs of numerous designs developed in almost every department of art; but merely to enumerate them would require a volume. One form of the old classic lamp was that of the nautilus; another, that ofGyphæa incurva; the zigzag mouldings of the Norman Gothic may be found in the carinated oysters of the Greensand; the more delicate frettings of similar form which roughened the pillars of a somewhat later age occur on Conularia and the dorsal spines of Gyracanthus. The old corals, too, abound in ornamental patterns, which man, unaware of their existence at the time, devised long after for himself. In an article on calico printing, which forms part of a recent history of Lancashire, there are a few ofthe patterns introduced, backed by the recommendation that they were the most successful ever tried. Of one of these, known as "Lane's Net," there sold a greater number of pieces than of any other pattern ever brought into the market. It led to many imitations; and one of the most popular of these answers line for line, save that it is more stiff and rectilinear, to the pattern in a recently discovered Old Red Sandstone coral, theSmithia Pengellyi. The beautifully arranged lines which so smit the dames of England, that each had to provide herself with a gown of the fabric which they adorned, had been stamped amid the rockseonsof ages before. And it must not be forgotten, that all these forms and shades of beauty which once filled all nature, but of which only a few fragments, or afew faded tints, survive, were created, not to gratify man's love of the æsthetic, seeing that man had no existence until long after they had disappeared, but in meet harmony with the tastes and faculties of the Divine Worker, who had in his wisdom produced them all.
Fig. 105.Fig. 105.MURCHISONIA BIGRANULOSA.(Old Red Sandstone.)Fig. 106.Fig. 106.CONULARIA ORNATA.(Old Red Sandstone.)
Fig. 105.Fig. 105.MURCHISONIA BIGRANULOSA.(Old Red Sandstone.)
Fig. 106.Fig. 106.CONULARIA ORNATA.(Old Red Sandstone.)
Fig. 107.Fig. 107.CALICO PATTERN.(Manchester.)Fig. 108.Fig. 108.SMITHIA PENGELLYI.(Old Red Sandstone.)
Fig. 107.Fig. 107.CALICO PATTERN.(Manchester.)
Fig. 108.Fig. 108.SMITHIA PENGELLYI.(Old Red Sandstone.)
You will, I trust, bear with me should I seek, in depths where the light shed by science becomes obscure, to guide my steps by light derived from another and wholly different source. In an assembly such as that which I have now the honor of addressing, there must be many shades of religious opinion. I shall, however, assail no man's faith, but simply lay before you a few deductions which, founded on my own, have supplied me with what I deem a consistent theory of the curious class of phenomena with which this evening we have been mainly dealing. First, then, I must hold that we receive the true explanation of theman-like character of the Creator's workings ere man was, in the remarkable text in which we are told that "God made man in his own image and likeness." There is no restriction here to moral quality: the moral image man had, and in large measure lost; but the intellectual image he still retains. As a geometrician, as an arithmetician, as a chemist, as an astronomer,—in short, in all the departments ofwhat are known as the strict sciences,—man differs from his Maker, not in kind, but in degree,—not as matter differs from mind, or darkness from light, but simply as a mere portion of space or time differs fromallspace oralltime. I have already referred to mechanical contrivances as identically the same in the Divine and human productions; nor can I doubt that, not only in the pervading sense of the beautiful in form and color which it is our privilege as men in some degree to experience and possess, but also in that perception of harmony which constitutes themusicalsense, and in that poetic feeling of which Scripture furnishes us with at once the earliest and the highest examples, and which we may term thepoeticsense, we bear the stamp and impress of the Divine image. Now, if this be so, we must look upon the schemes of Creation, Revelation, and Providence, not as schemes of mere adaptation to man's nature, but as schemes also specially adapted to the nature of God as the pattern and original nature. Further, it speaks, I must hold, of the harmony and unity of one sublime scheme, that, after long ages of immaturity,—after the dynasties of the fish, the reptile, and the mammal should in succession have terminated,—man should have at length come upon the scene in the image of God; and that, at a still later period, God himself should have come upon the scene in the form of man; and that thus all God's workings in creation should be indissolubly linked to God himself, not by any such mere likeness or image of the Divinity as that which the first Adam bore, but by Divinity itself in the Second Adam; so that on the rainbow-encircled apex of the pyramid of created being the Son of God and the Son of Man should sit enthroned forever in one adorable person. That man should have been made in the image of God seems to have been a meet preparation for God's after assumption of the form of man.It was perhaps thus secured thatstockandgraft, if I may venture on such a metaphor, should have the necessary affinity, and be capable of being united in a single person. The false gods of the Egyptians assumed, it was fabled, the forms of brutes: it was the human form and nature that was assumed by the true God;—so far as we know, the only form and nature that could have brought him into direct union with at once the matter and mind of the universe which he had created and made,—with "true body and reasonable soul." Yet further, I learn by inevitable inference from one of the more distinctive articles of my creed, that as certainly as the dynasty of the fish was predetermined in the scheme of Providence to be succeeded by the higher dynasty of the reptile, and that of the reptile by the still higher dynasty of the mammal, so it was equally predetermined that the dynasty of responsible, fallible man should be succeeded by the dynasty of glorified, immortal man; and that, in consequence, the present mixed state of things is not a mere result, as some theologians believe, of a certain human act which was perpetrated about six thousand years ago, but was, virtually at least, the effect of a God-determined decree, old as eternity,—a decree in which that act was written as a portion of the general programme. In looking abroad on that great history of life, of which the latter portions are recorded in the pages of revelation, and the earlier in the rocks, I feel my grasp of a doctrine first taught me by our Calvinistic Catechism at my mother's knee, tightening instead of relaxing. "The decrees of God are his eternal purposes," I was told, "according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass." And what I was told early I still believe. The programme of Creation and Providence, in all its successive periods, is of God, not of man. With thearrangements of the old geologic periods it is obvious man could have had nothing to do: the primeval ages of wondrous plants and monster animals ran their course without counsel taken of him; and in reading their record in the bowels of the earth, and in learning from their strange characters that such ages there were, and what they produced, we are the better enabled to appreciate the impressive directness of the sublime message to Job, when the "Lord answered him out of the whirlwind, and said, Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding." And I can as little regard the present scene of things as an ultimate consequence of what man had willed or wrought, as even any of the pre-Adamic ages. It is simply one scene in a foreordained series,—a scene intermediate in place between the age of the irresponsible mammal and of glorified man; and to provide for the upward passage to the ultimate state, we know that, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, he through whom the work of restoration has been effected was in reality what he is designated in the remarkable text, "The Lamb slain from thefoundationsof the world." First in the course of things, man in the image of God, and next, in meet sequence, God in the form of man, have been equally from all eternity predetermined actors in the same great scheme.
I approach a profound and terrible mystery. We can see how in the pre-Adamic ages higher should have succeeded lower dynasties. To be low was not to be immoral; to be low was not to be guilt-stained and miserable. The sea anemone on its half-tide rock, and the fern on its mossy hill-side, are low in their respective kingdoms; but they are, notwithstanding, worthy, in their quiet, unobtrusive beauty, of the God who formed them. It is only when the human period begins that we are startled andperplexed by the problem of a lowness not innocent,—an inferiority tantamount to moral deformity. In the period of responsibility, to be low means to be evil; and how, we ask, could a lowness and inferiority resolvable into moral evil have had any place in the decrees of that Judge who ever does what is right, and in whom moral evil can have no place? The subject is one which it seems not given to man thoroughly to comprehend. Permit me, however, to remark in reply, that in a sense so plain, so obvious, so unequivocally true, that it would lead an intelligent jury, impannelled in the case, conscientiously to convict, and a wise judge righteously to condemn, all that is evil in the present state of things man may as certainly have wrought out for himself, as the criminals whom we see sentenced at every justiciary court work out for themselves the course of punishment to which they are justly subjected.
It has been well said of the Author of all by the poet, that, "binding nature fast in fate," he "left free the human will." And it is this freedom or independency of will operating on an intellect moulded after the image and likeness of the Divinity that has rendered men capable of being what the Scriptures so emphatically term "fellow-workers with God." In a humble and restricted sense, as I have already remarked,—humble and restricted, but in that restricted sense obviously true,—the surface of the earth far and wide testifies to this fact of fellowship in working. The deputed lord of creation, availing himself of God's natural laws, does what no mere animal of the old geologic ages ever did, or ever could have done,—he adorns and beautifies the earth, and adds tenfold to its original fertility and productiveness. In this special sense, then, he is a fellow-worker with Him who, according to the Psalmist, "causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, and wine that makethglad the heart of man, and oil that maketh his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart." But it is in a greatly higher sense, and in reference to God's moral laws, that he is fitted to be his fellow-worker in the Scriptural sense. And his proper employment in this department is the elevation and development, moral and intellectual, of himself and his fellow-men, both in adaptation to the demands of the present time, and in preparation for a future state.
All experience, however, serves to show that in this paramount department man greatly fails; nay, that he is infinitely less true to his proper end and destiny than the beasts that perish to their several instincts. And yet it may be remarked, that such of the lower animals as are guided by pure instinct are greatly more infallible within their proper spheres than the higher, half-reasoning animals. The mathematical bee never constructs a false angle; the sagacious dog is not unfrequentlyoutin his calculations. The higher the animal in the scale, the greater its liability to error. But it is not the less true, that no fish, no reptile, no mammal, of the geologic or the recent ages, ever so failed in working out the purposes it was created to serve, as man has failed in working outhis; further, in no creature save in man does there exist that war of the mind between appetite and duty of which the Apostle so consciously complained. And we must seek an explanation of these twin facts in that original freedom of the will which, while it rendered man capable of beingof choiceGod's fellow-worker, also conferred on him an ability of choosingnotto work with God. And his choice of not working with him, or of working against him, being once freely made, we may see how, from man's very constitution and nature, as an intelligence united to matter that increases his kind from generation to generation in virtueof the original law, the ability of again working with God might be forever destroyed. And thus man's general condition as a lapsed creature may be as unequivocally a consequence of man's own act, as the condition of individuals born free, but doomed to slavery in punishment of their offences, is a consequence oftheirown acts. A brief survey of the many-colored and variously-placed human family, as at present distributed on the earth, may enable us in some degree to conceive of a matter which, involving, as it does, that master problem of moral science, the origin of evil, seems, as I have said, not to be given to man fully to comprehend.
"The different races of mankind," says Humboldt, employing, let me remark, the language of the distinguished German naturalist Müller, to give expression to the view which he himself adopts,—"the different races of mankind are not different species of a genus, but forms of one sole species." "The human species," says Cuvier, "appears to be single." "When we compare," says Pritchard, "all the facts and observations which have been heretofore fully established as to the specific instincts and separate psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the universe, we are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion, that all human races are of one species and one family." "God hath made of one blood," said the Apostle Paul, in addressing himself to theéliteof Athens, "all nations, for to dwell on the face of all the earth." Such, on this special head, is the testimony of Revelation, and such the conclusion of our highest scientific authorities. The question has, indeed, been raised in these latter times, whether each species of animals may not have been originally created, not by single pairs or in single centres, but by several pairs and in several centres, and, of course, the human species among the rest? And thequery,—for inreality it amounts to nothing more,—has been favorably entertained on the other side of the Atlantic. On purely scientific grounds it is of course difficult to prove a negative in the case, just as it would be difficult to prove a negative were the question to be, whether the planet Venus was not composed of quartz rock, or the planet Mars of Old Red Sandstone? But the portion of the problem really solvable by science,—the identity of the human race under all its conditions, and in all its varieties,—sciencehassolved. It has determined that all the various tribes of man are but forms of a single species. And in the definition of species,—waiving the Americandoubtuntil it shall at least become something more,—I am content to follow the higher authorities. "We unite," says M. de Candolle, "under the designation of aspecies, all those individuals that mutually bear to each other so close a resemblance as to allow of our supposing that they may have proceeded originally from a single being or a single pair." "Aspecies," says Buffon, "is a constant succession of individuals similar to and capable of reproducing each other." "Aspecies," says Cuvier, "is a succession of individuals which reproduces and perpetuates itself."
Now, all history and all tradition, so far as they throw light on the question at all, agree in showing that the centre in which the human species originated must have been somewhere in the temperate regions of the East, not far distant from the Caucasian group of mountains. All the old seats of civilization,—that of Nineveh, Babylon, Palestine, Egypt, and Greece,—are spread out around this centre. And it is certainly a circumstance worthy of notice, and surely not without bearing on thephysicalcondition of primeval humanity, that in this centre we find a variety of the species which naturalists of the highest standing regard as fundamentally typical of the highestraces of the globe. "The natives of the Caucasus," says Cuvier, "are even now considered as the handsomest on earth." And wherever man has, if I may so speak,fallenleast,—wherever he has retained, at least intellectually, the Divine image,—this Caucasian type of feature and figure, with, of course, certain national modifications, he also retains. It was developed in a remarkable degree among the old Greeks, as may be seen from the busts of some of their handsomer men; and still more remarkably in theirbeau idealof beauty, as exemplified in the statues of their gods. We see it also, though dashed with a shade of severity, in the strong forms and stern features of monarchs that reigned of old in Nineveh and Babylon, as brought to light in their impressive effigies by the excavations of Rawlinson and Layard. And further, though somewhat modified by the African dash, we detect it in the colossal statues of Egypt. Nor, as shown by Egyptian paintings still fresh in color and outline, was it less traceable in the ancient Jewish countenance and figure. It is still palpable, too, amid all the minor peculiarities of national physiognomy, in the various peoples of Europe. We may see it in our own country, though, as Sir Walter Scott truly tells us,—
"The rugged form may mark the mountain band,And harsher features and a mien more grave."
It walks, however, the boards of our Parliament House here in a very respectable type of Caucasian man; and all agree that nowhere else in modern Europe is it to be found more true to its original contour than among the high-bred aristocracy of England, especially among the female members of the class. Looking, then, at the entire evidence,—at the admitted fact that the Circassians of the present day are an eminently handsome people,—that the old Greeks,Ninevites, Egyptians, Jews, Romans, and with these all the modern nations of Europe, are but the varieties of the central race that have retained in greatest perfection the original traits,—I do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion that this Caucasian type was the type of Adamic man. Adam, the father of mankind, was no squalid savage of doubtful humanity, but a noble specimen of man; and Eve a soft Circassian beauty, but exquisitely lovely beyond the lot of fallen humanity.
"The loveliest pairThat ever yet in love's embraces met:Adam, the goodliest man of men since bornHis sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve."
I know not whether I should add what follows. It has been said that Luke, the "beloved physician," was also a painter. It has been said that that traditionary, time-honored form, which we at once recognize in the pictures of the old masters as that of the Saviour of mankind, he in reality bore when he walked this earth in the flesh. I know not what degree of probability attaches to the belief. I know not whether the traditionary form be in reality the true one. This, however, I know, thatifsuch was the form which the adorable Redeemer assumed when he took to himself a real body and a reasonable soul, the second Adam, like the first, exemplified, when upon earth, the perfect type of Caucasian man.
Let me next remark, that the further we remove from the original centre of the race, the more degraded and sunk do we find the several varieties of humanity. We must set wholly aside, in our survey, the disturbing element of modern emigration. Caucasian man has been pressing outwards. In the backwoods of America, in Southern Africa, in Australia, and in the Polynesian islands, the old Adamictype has been asserting its superiority, and annihilating before it the degraded races. But taking into account merely the aboriginal varieties, it seems to be a general rule, that the further we remove in any direction from the Adamic centre, the more animalized and sunk do we find the various tribes or races. Contrary to the conceptions of the assertors of the development hypothesis, we ascertain, as we proceed outwards, that the course is not one of progression from the low to the high, but of descent from the high to the low. Passing northwards, we meet, where the lichen-covered land projects into the frozen ocean, with the diminutive Laps, squat, ungraceful, with their flat features surmounted by pyramidal skulls of small capacity, and, as a race, unfitted for the arts either of peace or war. We meet also with the timid Namollas, with noses so flat as to be scarce visible in the women and children of the race; and with the swarthy Kamtschatkans, with their broad faces, protuberant bellies, and thin, ill-formed legs. Passing southwards, we come to the negro tribes, with their sooty skins, broad noses, thick lips, projecting jawbones, and partially-webbed fingers. And then we find ourselves among the squalid Hottentots, repulsively ugly, and begrimmed with filth; or the still more miserable Bushmen. Passing eastwards, after taking leave of the Persian and Indian branches of the Caucasian race, we meet with the squat Mongolian, with his high cheek bones set on a broad face, and his compressed, unintellectual, pig-like eyes; or encounter, in the Indian Archipelago or the Australian interior, the pitiably low Alforian races, with their narrow, retreating foreheads, slim, feeble limbs, and baboon-like faces. Or, finally, passing westward, we find the large-jawed, copper-colored Indians of the New World, vigorous in some of the northern tribes as animals, though feeble as men, but gradually sinking in southern America, as among the wild Caribs or spottedAraucans; till at the extremity of the continent we find, naked and shivering among their snows, the hideous, small-eyed, small-limbed, flat-headed Fuegians, perhaps the most wretched of human creatures. And all these varieties of the species, in which we find humanity "fallen," according to the poet, "into disgrace," are varieties that have lapsed from the original Caucasian type. They are all the descendants of man as God created him; but they do not exemplify man as God created him. They do not represent, save in hideous caricature, the glorious creature moulded of old by the hand of the Divine Worker. They are fallen,—degraded; many of them, as races, hopelessly lost. For all experience serves to show, that when a tribe of men falls beneath a certain level, it cannot come into competition with civilized man, pressing outwards from his old centres to possess the earth, without becoming extinct before him. Sunk beneath a certain level, as in the forests of America, in Van Dieman's Land, in New South Wales, and among the Bushmen of the Cape, the experience of more than a hundred years demonstrates that its destiny is extinction,—not restoration. Individuals may be recovered by the labors of some zealous missionary; but it is the fate of the race, after a few generations, to disappear. It has fallen too hopelessly low to be restored. There remain curious traces in the New World of these perished tribes. The Bible, translated into an old Indian language, from which the devoted David Brainerd taught so successfully a nation of Red Men, still exists; but it speaks in a dead tongue, which no one can now understand; for the nation to whom he preached has become extinct. And Humboldt tells us, in referring to a perished tribe of South America, that there lived in 1806, when he visited their country, an old parrot in Maypures, which could not be understood, because, as the natives informed him, it spoke the language of the Atures. Tribes of theaborigines of Australia have wholly disappeared during the present generation; and I remember seeing it stated in a newspaper paragraph, which appeared a few years ago, that the last male survivor of the natives of Tasmania was at that time in the latter stages of consumption.
But if man, in at least the more degraded varieties of the race, be so palpablynotwhat the Creator originally made him, by whom, then, was he made the poor lost creature which in these races we find him to be? He was made what he is, I reply, by man himself; and this, in many instances, by a process which we may see every day taking place among ourselves in individuals and families, though happily, not in races. Man's nature again,—to employ the condensed statement of the poet,—has been bound fast in fate, but his will has been left free. He is free either to resign himself to the indolence and self-indulgence so natural to the species; or, "spurning delights, to live laborious days;"—free either to sink into ignorant sloth, dependent uselessness, and self-induced imbecility, bodily and mental, or to assert by honest labor a noble independence,—to seek after knowledge as for hidden treasures, and, in the search, to sharpen his faculties and invigorate his mind. And while we see around us some men addressing themselves with stout, brave hearts to what Carlyle terms, with homely vigor, their "heavy job of work," and, by denying themselves many an insidious indulgence, doing it effectually and well, and rearing up well-taught families in usefulness and comfort, to be the stay of the future, we see other men yielding to the ignoble solicitations of appetite or of indolence, and becoming worse than useless themselves, and the parents of ignorant, immoral, and worse than useless families. The wandering vagrants of Great Britain at the present time have been estimated at from fifteen to twenty thousand souls; the hereditary paupers of England,—avastly more numerous class,—have become, in a considerable degree, a sept distinct from the general community; and in all our large towns there are certain per centages of the population,—unhappily ever increasing per centages,—that, darkened in mind and embruted in sentiment, are widely recognized as emphatically the dangerous classes of the community. And let us remember that we are witnessing in these instances no new thing in the history of the species: every period since that of the vagabond Cain has had its waifs and stragglers, who fell behind in the general march. In circumstances such as obtained in the earlier ages of the human family, all the existing nomades and paupers of our country would have passed into distinct races of men. For in the course of a few generations their forms and complexions would begin to tell of the self-induced degradation that had taken place in their minds; and in a few ages more they would have become permanent varieties of the species. There are cases in which not more than from two to three centuries have been found sufficient thoroughly to alter the original physiognomy of a race. "On the plantation of Ulster in 1611, and afterwards, on the success of the British against the rebels in 1641 and 1689," says a shrewd writer of the present day, himself an Irishman, "great multitudes of the native Irish were driven from Armagh and the south of Down, into the mountainous tract extending from the Barony of Fleurs eastward to the sea; on the other side of the kingdom the same race were exposed to the worst effects of hunger and ignorance, the two great brutalizers of the human race. The descendants of these exiles are now distinguished physically by great degradation. They are remarkable for open, projecting mouths, with prominent teeth and exposed gums; and their advancing cheek bones and depressed noses bear barbarism on their very front. In Sligo and northern Mayothe consequences of the two centuries of degradation and hardship exhibit themselves in the whole physical condition of the people, affecting not only the features, but the frame. Five feet two inches on an average,—pot-bellied, bow-legged, abortively featured, their clothing a wisp of rags,—these spectres of a people that were once well-grown, able-bodied, and comely, stalk abroad into the daylight of civilization, the annual apparition of Irish ugliness and Irish want."
Such is man as man himself has made him,—not man as he came from the hand of the Creator. In many instances the degradation has been voluntary; in others it has been forced upon families and races by the iron hand of oppression; in almost all,—whether self-chosen by the parents or imposed upon them,—the children and the children's children have, as a matter of inevitable necessity, been born to it. For, whatever we may think of the Scriptural doctrine on this special head, it is a fact broad and palpable in the economy of nature, that parentsdooccupy a federal position; and that the lapsed progenitors, when cut off from civilization and all external interference of a missionary character, become the founders of a lapsed race. The iniquities of the parents are visited upon the children. And in all such instances it ismanleft to the freedom of his own will that is the deteriorator of man. The doctrine of the Fall, in its purely theologic aspect, is a doctrine which must be apprehended by faith; but it is at least something to find that the analogies of science, instead of running counter to it, run in exactly the same line. It is one of the inevitable consequences of that nature of man which the Creator "bound fast in fate," while he left free his will, that the free will of the parent should become the destiny of the child.
But the subject is one in which we can see our way asbut "through a glass darkly." Nay, it is possible that the master problem which it involves no created intelligence can thoroughly unlock. It has been well said, that the "poet's heart" is informed by a "terrible sagacity;" and I am at times disposed to regard Milton's conception of the perplexity of the fallen spirits, when reasoning on "fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," and finding "no end in wandering mazes lost," much rather as a sober truth caught from the invisible world, than as merely an ingenious fancy. The late Robert Montgomery has rather unhappily chosen Satan as one of the themes of his muse; and in his long poem, designated in its second title "Intellect without God," he has set that personage a-reasoning in a style which, I fear, more completely demonstrates the absence of God than the presence of intellect. It has, however, sometimes occurred to me, that a poet of the larger calibre, who to the Divine faculty and vision added such a knowledge of geologic science as that which Virgil possessed of the Natural History of his time, or as that which Milton possessed of the general learning ofhis, might find, in a somewhat similar subject, the materials of a poem which "posterity would not willingly let die." There is one of the satirists justly severe on a class of critics
"Who, drily plain, without invention's aid,Write dull receipts how poems may be made."
But at some risk of rendering myself obnoxious to his censure, I shall attempt indicating at least the general scope and character of what the schoolmen might term apossiblepoem; which, if vivified by the genius of some of the higher masters of the lyre, broad of faculty, and at once great poets and great men, might prove one precious boon more to the world, suited, conformably to the special demands of these latter times, to
"assert Eternal Providence,And justify the ways of God to man."
There has been war among the intelligences of God's spiritual creation. Lucifer, son of the morning, has fallen like fire from heaven; and our present earth, existing as a half-extinguished hell, has received him and his angels. Dead matter exists, and in the unembodied spirits vitality exists; but not yet in all the universe of God has the vitality been united to the matter; animal life, to even the profound apprehension of the fallen angel, is an inconceivable idea. Meanwhile, as the scarce reckoned centuries roll by, vacantly and dull, like the cheerless days and nights over the head of some unhappy captive, the miserable prisoners of our planet become aware that there is a slow change taking place in the condition of their prison-house. Where a low, dark archipelago of islands raise their flat backs over the thermal waters, the heat glows less intensely than of old; the red fire bursts forth less frequently; the dread earthquake shakes more rarely; save in a few centres of intenser action, the great deep no longer boils like a pot; and though the heavens are still shut out by a gray ceiling of thick vapor, through which sun or moon never yet appeared, a less gloomy twilight struggles at noonday through the enveloping cloud, and falls more cheerfully than heretofore upon land and sea. At length there comes a morning in which great ocean and the scattered islands declare that God the Creator had descended to visit the earth. The hitherto verdureless land bears the green flush of vegetation; and there are creeping things among the trees. Nor is the till now unexampled mystery of animal life absent from the sounds and bays. It is the highest intelligences that manifest the deepest interest in the works of the All Wise. Nor can we doubt that on that morning of creative miracle, in whichmatter and vitality were first united in the bonds of a strange wedlock, the comprehensive intellect of the great fallen spirit—profound and active beyond the lot of humanity—would have found ample employment in attempting to fathom the vast mystery, and in vainly asking what these strange things might mean.
With how much of wonder, as scene succeeded scene, and creation followed creation,—as life sprang out of death, and death out of life,—must not that acute Intelligence have watched the course of the Divine Worker,—scornful of spirit and full of enmity, and yet aware, in the inner depths of his intellect, that what he dared insultingly to depreciate, he yet failed, in its ultimate end and purpose, adequately to comprehend! Standing in the presence of unsolved mystery, under the chill and withering shadow of that secret of the Lord which was not with him, how thoroughly must he not have seen, and with what bitter malignity felt, that the grasp of the Almighty was still upon him, and that in the ever varying problem of creation, which, with all his powers, he failed to unlock, and which, as age succeeded age, remained an unsolved problem still, the Divine Master against whom he had rebelled, but from whose presence it was in vain to flee, emphatically spake to him, as in an after age to the patriarch Job, and, with the quiet dignity of the Infinite, challenged him either to do or to know! "Shall he that coutendeth with the Almighty instruct him? He that reproveth God, let him answer. Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven? or canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?" With what wild thoughts must that restless and unhappy spirit have wandered amid the tangled mazes of the old carboniferous forests! With what bitter mockeries must he have watched the fierce wars which raged in their sluggish waters, among ravenouscreatures horrid with trenchant teeth, barbed sting, and sharp spine, and enveloped in glittering armor of plate and scale! And how, as generation after generation passed away, and ever and anon the ocean rolled where the land had been, or the land rose to possess the ancient seats of the ocean,—how, when looking back upon myriads of ages, and when calling up in memory what once had been, the features of earth seemed scarce more fixed to his view than the features of the sky in a day of dappled, breeze-borne clouds,—how must he have felt, as he became conscious that the earth was fast ripening, and that, as its foundations became stable on the abyss, it was made by the Creator a home of higher and yet higher forms of existence,—how must he have felt, if, like some old augur looking into the inner mysteries of animal life, with their strange prophecies, the truth had at length burst upon him, that reasoning, accountable man was fast coming to the birth,—man, the moral agent,—man, the ultimate work and end of creation,—man, a creature in whom, as in the inferior animals, vitality was to be united to matter, but in whom also, as in no inferior animal, responsibility was to be united to vitality! How must expectancy have quickened,—how must solicitude have grown,—when, after the dynasty of the fish had been succeeded by the dynasty of the reptile, and that of the reptile by the dynasty of the sagacious mammal, a time had at length arrived when the earth had become fixed and stable, and the proud waves of ocean had been stayed,—when, after species and genera in both kingdoms had been increased tenfold beyond the precedent of any former age, the Creative Hand seemed to pause in its working, and the finished creation to demand its lord! Even at this late period, how strange may not the doubts and uncertainties have been that remained to darken the mind of the lostspirit! It was according to his experience,—stretched backwards to the first beginnings of organic vitality, and coextensive, at a still earlier period, with God's spiritual universe,—that allanimalsshould die,—that allmoral agentsshould live. How, in this new creature,—this prodigy of creation, who was to unite what never before had been united,—the nature of the animals thatdiewith the standing and responsibility of the moral agents thatlive,—how, in this partaker of the double nature, was the discrepancy to be reconciled? How, in this matter, were the opposite claims of life and death to be adjusted, or the absoluteimmortality, which cannot admit of degrees, to be made to meet with and shade into themortalitywhich, let us extend the term of previous vitality as we may, must forever involve the antagonistic idea of final annihilation and the ceasing to be?
At length creation receives its deputed monarch. For, moulded by God's own finger, and in God's own likeness, man enters upon the scene, an exquisite creature, rich in native faculty, pregnant with the yet undeveloped seeds of all wisdom and knowledge, tender of heart and pure of spirit, formed to hold high communion with his Creator, and to breathe abroad his soul in sympathy over all that the Creator had made. And yet, left to the freedom of his own will, there is a weakness in the flesh that betrays his earthly lineage. It is into the dust of the ground that the living soul has been breathed. The son of the soil, who, like the inferior animals, his subjects, sleeps and wakes, and can feel thirst and hunger, and the weariness of toil, and the sweets of rest, and who come under the general law, "increase and multiply," promulgated of old to them, stands less firmly than the immaterial spirits stood of old; and yet even they rebelled against Heaven, and fell. There awakes a grim hope in the sullen lord of thefirst revolt. Ages beyond tale or reckoning has this temple of creation been in building. Long have its mute prophecies in fishes and in creeping things, in bird and in beast, told of coming man, its final object and end. And now there needeth but one blow, and the whole edifice is destroyed, God's purposes marred and frustrated, and this new favorite of earth dashed back to the dust out of which he was created, and brought, like the old, extinct races, under the eternal law of death. Armed with the experience in evil of unsummed ages, the Tempter plies his work: nor is it to low or ignoble appetites that he appeals. It is to the newly-formed creature's thirst for knowledge; it is to his love stronger than death. The wiles of the Old Serpent prevail; man falls prostrate before him; creation trembles; and then from amid the trees of the garden comes the voice of God. And lo! in an enigma mysterious and dark a new dispensation of prophecy begins. Victims bleed; altars smoke; the tabernacle arises amid the white tents of the desert; the temple ascends all glorious on the heights of Mount Zion; prophet after prophet declares his message. At length, in the fulness of time, the Messiah comes; and, in satisfying the law, and in fulfilling all righteousness, and in bringing life and immortality to light, abundantly shows forth that the terminal dynasty of all creation had been of old foreordained, ere the foundations of the world, to possess for its eternal lord and monarch, not primeval man, created in the image of God, but God, made manifest in the flesh, in the form of primeval man. But how breaks on the baffled Tempter the sublime revelation? Wearily did he toil,—darkly did he devise, and take, in his great misery, deep counsel against the Almighty; and yet all the while, while striving and resisting as an enemy, has he been wielded as a tool; when, glaring aloof in hisproud rebellion, the grasp of the Omnipotent has been upon him, and the Eternal Purposes have encompassed him, and he has been working out, all unwittingly, the foreordained decree, "For our God maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him, and the remainder thereof doth he restrain."