The records of science furnish us with examples in which complicated causes have operated through vast periods of duration anterior to man’s existence, or even anterior to that of the existence of any of the more perfect animals, in order to provide for the wants and happiness of those animals, especially of man. Laws, apparently conflicting and irregular in their action, have been so controlled and directed, and made to conspire, as to provide for the wants of civilised life untold ages before man’s existence. In those early times, vast forests, for instance, might have been growing along the shores of estuaries; and these dying, were buried deep in the mud, there to accumulate thick beds of vegetable matter over huge areas; and this, by a long series of changes, was at length converted into coal. This could be of no use whatever till man’s existence, nor even then, till civilisation had taught him to employ the substance for his comfort, and for a great variety of useful arts. Dr. Hitchcock illustrates this position as follows: Look, for instance, at the small island of Great Britain. At this day 15,000 steam-engines are driven by means of coal, with a power equal to that of 2,000,000 of men; and thus is put into operation machinery equalling the unaided power of 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 of men. The influence thence emanating reaches the remotest portions of the globe, and tends mightily to the civilisation and happiness of the race. And is all this an accidental effect of nature’s laws? Is it not rather a striking example of special protective providence? What else but divine power, intent upon a specific purpose, could have so directed the countless agencies employed through so many ages as to bring about such marvellous results?[121] --------------------- Footnote 121: _Religious Truth illustrated from Science._ ---------------------------- SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. School-learning is, undoubtedly, the best foundation: “In all industrial pursuits connected with the natural sciences, in fact in all pursuits not simply dependent on manual dexterity, the development of the intellectual faculties, by what may be termed ’school-learning,’ constitutes the basis and chief condition of progress and of every improvement. A young man with a mind well stored with solid scientific acquirements will, without difficulty or effort, master the technical part of an industrial pursuit; whereas, in general, an individual who may be thoroughly master of the technical part is altogether incapable of seizing upon any new fact that has not previously presented itself to him, or of comprehending a scientific principle and its application.” Lord Stanhope has thus strikingly illustrated the subject: