3. Geology, moreover, in deciphering the evidences of those stupendous operations which resulted in the statical, mineral, and organic arrangements merging in the modern epoch, inculcates some important truths connected with the science of natural theology. The mind, indeed, can never escape, in these investigations, from theistic conclusions. Step by step, as we ascended through the component strata of the globe, witnessed the modifications to which they were subjected, and observed the successive introduction and extinction of so many types of animal and vegetable life, we were just furnished with so many incontestable proofs of the direct interposition of Almighty power. If, indeed, I can read anything more clearly than another in these constantly recurring geological phenomena, termed epochs and formations, it is that of INTERFERENCE with the established order of things. I am conscious that matter did not originate itself. I can see no power in what is termed a law of matter to constitute organic bodies. The originator of matter must be the disposer of all its forms. And when I see these forms so repeatedly changed, assuming new shapes, and giving new scope for varied and multiplied degrees of enjoyment, I have only the more evidences and illustrations before me, that creation and change are, in these instances, correlative terms. The quadrupeds of the tertiary age are like nothing that preceded them in any of the orders or sections of animal existence. Their size, structure, and abundance, equally rivet the attention. And, however long or short the period assigned them on earth, they constitute a group of organic statuary, too remarkable to have been slid in and out by the simple operations of material law. The geological fact, of formation after formation, and of life after life, lies at the foundation of the sublime truth, that God is potentially in, arranging and disposing anew, the entire series of his works: and when I see this mundane scene shifted in all its parts, one system subverted, and another so very different introduced; and, again, the organic and inorganic condition of things readjusted, and in keeping as before, I at once rise in the contemplation of the change “from nature up to nature’s God.”