8. In the department of "final causes," as they have been termed, Scripture and geology unite in affording large and interesting views. They illustrate the procedure of the All-wise Creator during a long succession of ages, and thus enable us to see the effects of any of his laws, not only at one time, but in far distant periods. To reject the consideration of this peculiarity of geological science would be the extremest folly, and would involve at once a misinterpretation of the geologic record and a denial of the agency of an intelligent Designer as revealed in Scripture, and indicated by the succession of beings. Many of the past changes of the earth acquire their full significance only when taken in connection with the present wants of the earth's inhabitants; and along the whole course of the geological history the creatures that we meet with are equally rich in the evidences of nice adaptation to circumstances and wonderful contrivances for special ends, with their modern representatives. As an example of the former, how wonderful is the connection of the great vegetable accumulations of the ancient coal swamps, and the bands and nodules of iron-stone which were separated from the ferruginous sands or clays in their vicinity by the action of this very vegetable matter, with the whole fabric of modern civilization, and especially with the prosperity of that race which, in our time, stands in the front of the world's progress. In a very ancient period, wide swamps and deltas, teeming with vegetable life, and which, if they now existed, would be but pestilent breeders of miasmata, spread over large tracts of the northern hemisphere, on which marine animals had previously accumulated thick sheets of limestone. Vast beds of vegetable matter were collected by growth in these swamps, and the waste particles that passed off in the form of organic acids were employed in concentrating the oxide of iron in underlying clays and sands. In the lapse of ages the whole of these accumulations were buried deep in the crust of the earth; and long periods succeeded, when the earth was tenanted by reptilian and other creatures, unconscious of the treasures beneath them. The modern period arrived. The equable climate of the coal era had passed away. Continents were prepared for the residence of man, and the edges of the old carboniferous beds were exposed by subterranean movements, and laid bare by denudation. Man was introduced, fell from his state of innocence, and was condemned to earn his subsistence by the sweat of his brow; and now for the first time appears the use of these buried coal swamps. They now afford at once the materials of improvement in the arts and of comfortable subsistence in extreme climates, and subjects of surpassing interest to the naturalist. Similar instances may be gleaned by the natural theologian from nearly every part of the geological history.