extent (the portion of the Continent of newest and probably post-Adamic origin) had been derived from foci of creation seated in pre-Adamic lands. And these remarkable facts have induced the Professor,” it was added, “to maintain the improbability of post-Adamic creations.” With the introduction of man into the scene of existence, creation, I repeat, seems to have ceased. What is it that now takes its place, and performs its work? During the previous dynasties, all elevation in the scale was an effect simply of creation. Nature lay dead in a waste theatre of rock, vapor, and sea, in which the insensate laws, chemical; mechanical, and electric, carried on their blind, unintelligent processes: the _creative fiat_ went forth; and, amid waters that straightway teemed with life in its lower forms, vegetable and animal, the dynasty of the fish was introduced. Many ages passed, during which there took place no further elevation: on the contrary, in not a few of the newly introduced species of the reigning class there occurred for the first time examples of an asymmetrical misplacement of parts, and, in at least one family of fishes, instances of defect of parts: there was the manifestation of a downward tendency towards the degradation of monstrosity, when the elevatory fiat again went forth, and, _through an act of creation_, the dynasty of the reptile began. Again many ages passed by, marked, apparently, by the introduction of a warm-blooded oviparous animal, the bird, and of a few marsupial quadrupeds, but in which the prevailing class reigned undeposed, though at least unelevated. Yet again, however, the elevatory fiat went forth, and _through an act of creation_ the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped began. And after the further lapse of ages, the elevatory fiat went forth yet once more _in an act of creation_; and with the human, heaven-aspiring dynasty, the moral government of God, in its connection with at least the world which we inhabit, “took beginning.” And then creation ceased. Why? Simply because God’s moral government _had_ begun,—because in necessary conformity with the institution of that government, there was to be a thorough identity maintained between the glorified and immortal beings of the terminal dynasty, and the dying magnates of the dynasty which now is; and because, in consequence of the maintenance of this identity as an essential condition of this moral government, mere _acts of creation_ could no longer carry on the elevatory process. The work analogous in its end and object to those _acts of creation_ which gave to our planet its successive dynasties of higher and yet higher existences, is the work of REDEMPTION. It is the elevatory process of the present time,—the only possible provision for that final act of _re_-creation “to everlasting life,” which shall usher in the terminal dynasty.