But the highest inducement to this study must ever be that so quaintly put by old Sir Thomas Browne: "The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a world." Geology lifts off for us the veil that shrouds the past, and lays bare the monuments of successive creations that had come and gone long ere the human race began. She traces out the plan of the Divine working during a vast cycle of ages-, and points out how the past dovetails with the present, and how the existing condition of things comes in as but the last and archetypal economy in a long progressive series. By thus revealing what has gone before, she enables us more fully to understand what we see around us now. Much that is incomplete she restores; much that is enigmatical she explains. She teaches us more fully man's true position in the created universe, by showing that in him all the geologic ages meet that he is the point towards which creation has ever been tending. How far the facts brought to light by geology may bear upon the future, will not, perhaps, be solved until that future shall have come. There is, nevertheless, in the meanwhile, material enough for solemn and earnest reflection, and as years go by the amount will probably be always increasing. For we must ever be only learners here, and when all earthly titles and distinctions have passed away, and we enter amid the realities of another world, we shall carry with us this one common name alone. It will, perhaps, be then as now, that only "In contemplation of created things By steps we may ascend to God." And it can surely be no unmeet preparation for such a scene, in humble faith to read the records of His doings which the Almighty has graven on the rocks around us. Many problems meet us on every hand problems which it seems impossible for us now to solve and as the circle of science ever widens, its enveloping circumference of difficulty and darkness widens in proportion. It is, doubtless, well that it should be so; for we are thus taught to regard our present state as imperfect and incomplete, and to long for that higher and happier one promised by the Redeemer to those that love Him, when "we shall know thoroughly even as we are thoroughly known." TABLE OF FOSSILIFEROUS ROCKS. LYELL'S _Elements_, p. 109.