when guilt with all its hideous train shall be for ever chased away from the abodes of the redeemed. [Footnote 32: In connexion with this subject I have been often struck with a passage in St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, i. 10, "All things were created by him [Christ] and for [εις--with a view to, on account of] him." It is probable that these words, in their full meaning, cannot be understood by us. Yet they seem to point to Christ as at once the Creator, and himself the acme and design of creation; and perhaps they may contain what hereafter shall prove the key to the mystery of creation. On this impressive and difficult subject the reader should refer to the closing chapter of Hugh Miller's _Footprints of the Creator_. See also M'Cosh on _Typical Forms_, 2d edit. p. 531.] Such thoughts as these sometimes arise in the mind of one who labours much among organic remains. By no class of fossils are they more vividly suggested than by those which we come next to examine--the various tribes of molluscous animals. This results from the high antiquity of these organisms, and the similarity of type which they have manifested in all ages. In the very earliest geological periods they exhibited the same symmetry of external form as now, the same beauty of structure, and apparently the same delicacy of colour. Nay, so closely did they resemble their existing congeners that we are seldom at a loss as to their affinities, and can refer them to their places in the scale of creation, and sometimes even to genera still living.[33] [Footnote 33: It must be admitted, however, that not a few of the identifications already made are somewhat suspicious The natural tendency is to perceive resemblances--a tendency which even the most rigid science sometimes fails to control.] The geological ages saw many strange types of creation. One era, in especial, furnished reptiles which united in their structure the snout of the porpoise, the head of the lizard, the teeth of the crocodile, the paddles of the whale, and the backbone of the fish. Some displayed the long pliant neck of the swan, and others careered through the air on wings like those of the bat. But the molluscous tribes have never exhibited such aberrant forms. The existing classes and orders of the naturalist are still the same as those which nourished during the successive geological periods. Hence their value as evidence of physical changes in the ancient world. Hence, too, the conviction, forced upon the mind of the observer, that the conditions for the support of life never deviated much from those now in operation; that in place of all the varied beauty of the world having arisen for the use of man, it existed millions of years ere the breath of life had been breathed into his nostrils; that in fine, man is but a new-comer, a creation of yesterday.