IS FAVOUR OF REVEALED RELIGION.

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coveries of tlie geologist are yet to exercise on the ethical de-partments of literatura We can, however, already see thatthe vastly extended knowledge of God ’s workings of old whichthe science communicates must exercise no slight influenceupon certain departments of natural theology, and give a newtone to those controversies regarding the evidences of our faithwhich the Church has ever and anon to maintain with theworld. Geology has already put an end to that old fictionof an infinite series of beings which the atheist was wont tosubstitute in his reasonings for the great First Cause throughwhich all exists ; nor does it leave other than very unsolidground to the men who would fain find an equivalent for theexploded infinite series of their predecessors in a developingprinciple. Nay, I would ask such of the gentlemen whom Inow address as have studied the subject most thoroughly,whether, at those grand lines of division between the Palseo-zoic and Secondary, and again between the Secondary andTertiary periods, at which the entire type of organic beingalters, so that all on the one side of the gap belongs to onefashion, and all on the other to another and wholly differentfashion,—whether they have not been as thoroughly impress-ed with the conviction that there existed a Creative Agent,to whom the sudden change was owing, as if they themselveshad witnessed the miracle of creation 1 Farther, may we nothold that that acquaintance with bygone creations, each insuccession of a higher type than the one which preceded it,which geology enables us to form, must soon greatly affectthe state of arguments employed on the sceptical side, which,framed on the assumption that creation is but a “ singulareffect,”—an effect without duplicate,—have urged, that fromthat one effect only can we know aught regarding the pro-ducing Cause 1 Knowing of the Cause but from the effect,and having experience of but one effect, we could not ration-ally hold, it has been argued, that that producing Cause could