It is the same Nature--that is to say, God through or in the manner of Nature--working everywhere and in all time, causing the wind to blow, and the rain to fall, and the tide to ebb and flow, inconceivable ages before the birth of our race, as now. So also we learn from the conifers of those old ages that there were winter and summer upon earth, before any of us lived to liken the one to all that is genial in our own nature, or to say that the other breathed no airs so unkind as man's ingratitude. Let no one suppose there is any necessary disrespect for the Creator in thus tracing His laws in their minute and familiar operations. There is really no true great and small, grand and familiar, in Nature. Such only appear when we thrust ourselves in as a point from which to start in judging. Let us pass, if possible, beyond immediate impressions, and see all in relation to Cause, and we shall chastenedly admit that the whole is alike worshipful. The Creator, then, is seen to have formed our earth, and effected upon it a long and complicated series of changes, in the same manner in which we find that he conducts the affairs of Nature before our living eyes; that is, in the manner of natural law. This is no rash or unauthorised affirmation. It is what we deduce from the calculation of a Newton and a Laplace on the one hand, and from the industrious observation of facts by a Murchison and a Lyell on the other. It is a point of stupendous importance in human knowledge; here at once is the whole region of the inorganic taken out of the dominion of marvel, and placed under an idea of Divine regulation. _III.--The History of the Earth's Life_