sonal inspection, Townsend adds: "But what is most remarkable, is to see four enormous chasms, almost perpendicular, which divide both mountains and their vallies, and which appear as if they had just been rent asunder. Similar to these are the chasms on Chimborazo, particularly noticed by Humboldt*.”

Molina remarks, concerning the smaller chains of mountains exterior to the great ridge of the Andes, that the disposition of the strata varies greatly in different places; and that in these derangements the laws of gravitation are seldom observed, as the substance which in one mountain forms the upper stratum, is frequently the inferior in another†.

"The whole of the Alpine region, considered as one mass, shows the most evident marks of dislocation+"

"In Russia and Siberia the same phenomena

* P. 223, 224.

† Molina's History of Chili translated, &c. London, 1809, vol. i. p. 51, 52,

Townsend, p. 207.

appear*."

The dislocations above described are

visible to every eye.

The convulsions experienced by the earth since it became the habitation of man, are farther attested and illustrated by the blocks and masses of particular species of stone, masses occasionally bearing the marks of having been rounded by attrition in agitated waters, which are found scattered on its surface, sometimes in inland regions, sometimes on the margin of the sea, in countries where no mountains of similar stone are known to exist within any such distance as to account by common causes for the position of the fragments, or to exist at all. Thus innumerable masses of granite lie detached in the country near the mouth of the Oder, and over marshes from St. Petersburg to Novogorod; and also near the mouth of the Elbe, and over Lower Saxony.Various kindred phenomena are discoverable in Tortola, in England, in Ireland, and in Spain†; and others are repeatedly particularised by Saus

* Townsend on the authority of Pallas.

+ Townsend, p. 239. 241. 243. 245. See also De Luc's Lettres Physiques et Morales, tom. v. p. 83.

D

sure as evident in the regions bordering on the Alps*.

From this universal scene of confusion in the superior strata of the earth, let the student of natural theology turn his thoughts to the general works of God. What are the characteristics, in which those works, however varied in their kinds, in their magnitudes, and in their purposes, obviously agree? What are the characteristics by which they are all, with manifest intention, imprinted? Order and Harmony. In every mode of animal life, from the human frame down to the atomic and unsuspected existences in water, which have been rendered visible by the lenses of modern science; in the vegetable world, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop by the wall, from the hyssop by the wall to the minutest plant discernible under the microscope: in the crystallisations of the mineral kingdom, of its metals, of its salts, of its spars, of its gems: in the revolution of the heavenly bodies, and in the consequent reciprocations of day and night, and seasons:-all is

* Saussure, Voyages dans les Alpes, tom. i. p. 215, 216. 226-230. ii. 138. 148. 205. 208. iv. 284, 285,

regularity. In the works of God, order and harmony are the rule; irregularity and confusion form the rare exception. Under the divine government, an exception so portentous as that which we have been contemplating, a transformation from order and harmony to irregularity and confusion involving the integuments of a world, cannot be attributed to any circumstance which in common language we term fortuitous. It proclaims itself to have been owing to a moral cause; to a moral cause demanding so vast and extraordinary an effect; a moral cause which cannot but be deeply interesting to man, cannot but be closely connected with man, the sole being on the face of this globe who is invested with moral agency; the sole being therefore on this globe who is subjected to moral responsibility; the sole being on this globe whose moral conduct can have had a particle of even indirect influence on the general condition of the globe which he inhabits.

The violence of the internal commotions, by which the dislocation of the strata constituting the exterior portion of the globe were effected, will receive irresistible proof, when we advance to other results equally or more astonishing, which

those convulsions produced. Agitating with kin dred impetuosity the summits of the mountains and the abysses of the ocean, they confounded lands and seas in commingled devastation; and dislodg ing from one quarter of the world its plants, its trees, its animals, its fishes, its submarine vege tation, rolled away the spoils, and deposited them in the opposite extremities of the earth.

An objection, however, to this statement may perhaps be raised. On the authority of certain writers on geology it may be alleged, that the present earth was constructed from the materials of a former globe; and that the shells and other organic remains imbedded in our existing strata belonged to animals inhabiting that globe. In reply, then, it may be stated, first, that the hy pothesis is gratuitous and unnecessary; and, se condly, that, if true, it would not invalidate the argument against which it is brought forward.

The hypothesis is gratuitous and unnecessary.-Natural reason cannot prove it, nor sh necessity for it. The grounds, so

aware, on which it is rested

of the shells and organ

mals, and the reli