dimly, across our finite prison-wall, evidence of 'the Divinity that shapes our ends,' abuse the means as we may."[371] Long before the appearance of man upon the earth, the providence of God laid up in its strata those vast treasures of granite, sandstone, lime, marble, coal, salt, petroleum, and the various metals, the product of a long succession of ages and revolutions, thus making an inexhaustible provision for the necessities of man, and furnishing ample resources for the development of his genius and skill.[372] In the vegetable life which appeared on the globe immediately prior to and contemporaneous with the advent of man, we can recognize a providential arrangement made for man. In the flora of the Palæozoic and Secondary periods we can not fail to observe the absence of all those plants which are adapted for human food. Even in the Tertiary epoch, which immediately precedes the Adamic or human period, so far as Geology reveals, there were few or no plants yielding the appropriate supplies for the sustentation of man. There are few indications of any of those vegetables from which man may derive food and valuable fibre, and, in a word, of species which support and clothe by far the larger portion of the human race. "Scarcely any grasses appear in the list of extinct vegetation, and there is reason to believe that the principal cereals which are characteristic of the human period--as barley, wheat, oats, rye, millet, Indian corn, and rice"--had no existence.[373] When the fullness of time was come, and all things were ready for the reception of man, then God called him into being, and invested him with dominion over nature. Physical geography also indicates, not only a state of preparation for man, but also a special adaptation of the fixed forms of the earth's surface for securing the perfect development of man according to the Divine ideal. And as the land which man inhabits, the food he eats, the air he breathes, the mountains and rivers and seas which are his neighbors, the skies that overshadow him, the diversities of climate to which he is subject, and indeed all physical conditions, exert a powerful influence upon his tastes, pursuits, habits, and character--we may presume that not only are all these conditions predetermined by God, but continually under his control and supervision.