being poor indeed. We may possibly discover plants yet earlier or an Eophyte period preceding the Eozoon. The Paleozoic, called also Primary time, has its own ages and variety of strata: Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian. The lower present but few traces of living beings, but the upper are crowded with fossils, no longer mere Protozoa, but representative of five orders of life. The sixth also, the Vertebrate, appears in fishes of many kinds. New forms of life come in continually some, without previous representation, appear at once as kings; some, continuing but a little while, find a grave, and are no more seen. These meaner Enochs and Elijahs were not supernaturally removed, for others supernaturally to come; they simply indicate that the natural plan works by continual change. There are kinds which resemble the young of modern animals, but enlarged and exaggerated as had they outgrown themselves. The coal measures present remains of vegetables, insects, land-snails, fishes, reptiles-small and large, prophecies of things to come. In course of this vast time land rose above and subsided beneath the waters several times. There is something grand and awful in the thought of a world of vegetable and animal life-living, dying, slowly carried beneath the waters, and gradually raised again. In this vast duration nearly nine-tenths of all the known rocks were formed in the earth's crust, that is, if we reckon thickness. In the great pulses of the world more and more land was elevated, and the Permian flexures fixed the form of the now existing continents. A definite plan, working through long ages in regular march, seems to have correlated life with physical and organic change. The Mesozoic, Secondary time, middle period of life, was occupied by myriads and myriads of organisms. On the rocks, formed during this and the Tertiary time, exist the most populous and civilised assemblages of mankind. The movements of the water, and action of the elements, rendered the earth favourable for that kind of vegetation and animal life which man requires. All the lower kingdoms of animal existence were present; birds swam on the surface of the deep, waded in the shallows, left their footprints on the land, perched on the trees, and flew in the air. There was an abundance of singular plants, still represented in the tropics; and the great forests of the later Mesozoic were gay with flowers, beautiful in foliage, which swarmed with insect life. Gigantic lizards were remarkable, exhibiting a higher type of reptile organization than any now existing. Pterodactyles, somewhat like great bats, wheeled and screamed in the air, pouncing on smaller creatures of their kind, and perhaps diving into the sea for fish. It was the age of reptiles, of mighty and terrible creatures in sea and on land: not continuing till our day, not waiting for man to war against them, they perished in the great cretaceous subsidence. Apportioning this time into the Trias, Oolite, Wealden, and Cretaceous formations, it does not seem to have occupied, so far as we can judge by measurement of the deposits, one-third, or one-fourth, some say one-fifth or sixth, of the time taken up in the Palæozoic period. The Neozoic or Tertiary time, the great age of Mammals, is subdivided into Eocene, dawn of recent life; Oligocene, recent; Miocene, less recent; Pliocene, more recent; Pleistocene, most recent. Fossils of the Eocene deposits are numerous. Plants, in the main, are closely allied to existing tropical and sub-tropical forms. Nummulites are remarkable, and bony fishes, reptiles, birds, mammals, represent most of the modern orders. The Oligocene formation between the Eocene and Miocene is slightly developed in the south of England, and vastly in the north-east of Italy. There were vast coral reefs in the period, and the varied nature of strata is remarkable for intermediate fauna. The Miocene was, in some respects, a better age than the present. The Northern Hemisphere possessed a mild and equable climate, a vast surface of land, a rich varied vegetation, and noble forms of animals. The Pliocene abounded in species of elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and horse, now extinct. There are abundant traces of oxen, deer, and carnivora. It is considered that from the Eocene to the Miocene was a time of rapid introduction of new species; but from the Pliocene to the post-Pliocene, and to the modern, there seems to have been a diminution of species. The Pleistocene is remarkable for Divine Interferences. 177 the advent of man. He seems to have had his first dwelling in the East, where flesh-food was not strictly necessary for him -a pleasant land. "These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good, Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!" Paradise Lost. The history of the earth is wonderful. The consecutive formation of continents, deep oceans, and mountain-ranges indicate repeated upheavals, subsidences, and curvings, caused by the dissipation of heat. The extent and rapidity of these changes, the wear and tear of world-wide nature, were great in the earlier periods, and apparently irregular in their course, one wave interfering with another. It is not necessary to believe in many destructions and repeated new creations; we acknowledge an economy of internal and external parts— a continuous connection between the distribution of living things over the globe, their variation and modification, and the relations of land and sea. These physical changes were not fortuitous; but, with the wonderful art in nature seen in form, ornament, and physiology, are the sum of the action of mysterious Energy on matter, and part of a great philosophy. Every one being the complex of so many relations, a conjuncture of so many events, a synthesis of so many energies, that to know one event thoroughly is not possible, except by an intuition embracing the whole universe. Unity everywhere is an expression of will, and varieties unbounded show that law is not fate-things being different when the conditions of their existence change. The origin of life was by the interference of a Power exceeding all that is mechanical in matter: the introduction of a new state from a previous state by means of a process which we cannot investigate, and of which we know nothing: nevertheless we can affirm-Life is not a functional product, but that by which function is possible and actual. When vegetation appeared, the inorganic was subjected; when animals came, the vegetable was subordinated; and when man entered, life-energies advanced to mental and moral manifestations. The complication seems like a vast oceanswell. On the surface large billows roll, themselves bearing M smaller waves and wavelets roughened by riplets, the accumulated momentum disappearing only to reappear. Every commencement having origin in some pre-existing source of power, this power being the manifestation of a principle, active in every form of matter and path of motion, impressing our thought with the conviction that beyond all, and containing all, is the Infinite and Eternal. When godless men tell us that their mechanics are the highest phenomenal conception which can be formed to represent the Ineffable Reality, or rashly assert that humanity is the most perfect type of existence in the universe, they are like minnows mistaking their native rivulet for the outlying ocean. True men know that these rivulets have their origin in water-threads drawn from the mountain-side. They ascend the mountain, guided by the thread, till finally they arrive at the vast snowfields of the summit. There, where earth ceases, they stand perplexed, thrilled, awed-they worship; worship the great God who makes the thread of light, the cloud of spray, the leaping cataract, the flowing river, the sea-wave, the floating mist, the snow-flake, to be embodied histories-successions of eventsin which alone the ultimate particles of matter are real and lasting. Of the innumerable combinations of matter in infinite space, and of the progressions of energy, we know but little. To assert that "yonder hundred million spheres" contain no forms of existence transcending manhood-as manhood transcends life in the rain-drop, that our intelligent will is not a sparklet of the Intelligent Will-is not so much a height of unwarrantable assumption as an abyss of folly. We are sure that there is a vast outlying Invisible World. No merely ideal production, though beyond the range of actual presentation, like snow at the North Pole.. Mental vision, so far as science is concerned, being the only limit of verification; for the domain of the senses is almost infinitely small in comparison with the vast regions which can be traversed by the intellect. These regions are, some of them, in strict accordance with the visible, and may be dealt with in confidence; or they may be disengaged from conformity with the sensible, not written in any rubric of the known, though the phenomena Changes are Subject to Law. 179 presented to sense may afford a base line for some proximate measurement of the parallax of the inaccessible, or yield indistinct views of a spirit-world wholly unlike the material world. A spirit-world not ceasing to be spiritual because it has means of passage to, and modes of action on, our intellectual and moral nature; even as refined and immaterial existences freely pervade the grosser. Thus we perceive that our range of possible knowledge is infinite, nor must we allow Materialists to deprive us of those vast and glorious operations which belong to intelligence, nor to shut us within the bars of that which we touch, taste, see, hear, smell. The constant change by which the pole of our earth revolves round the pole of the ecliptic in 24,450 years, so that the polestar of to-day will not be the pole-star 3000 years hence, is a regulated process extending to all things, even to those which seem lawless. The two hundred and seventy volcanoes constantly or intermittently throwing out steam, hot ashes, and lava; the story of the submergence of an ancient continent, whether fabulous or true; the Atlantis of Plato, even if but a myth; may be accounted for by law. Law, infinite in variety of operation, making of the sea a continent, and of the continent a Polynesia; interspersing catastrophes with uniform operations, so that no catastrophe is too great or too sudden to be theoretically inconsistent with the reign of law; variations in flora and fauna being wrought by some continuous influence acting for ages, or, it may be, at some special moment starting out on a new line, or a comparatively swift energy stamping old forms. with a new type. One germ is microscopic, but it develops into a highly organised animal. Another germ is also microscopic, but it becomes an animal altogether different, or no animal at all—a plant. These changes are all governed by a deep and wide-reaching law, but we are absolutely ignorant of it. Must we say, because our imperfect symbols whereby we try to realise that which sustains the law, are unable, apart from Revelation, to construct a science of the Deity, “Law is Fate?" Certainly not. The world, in some respects, is inscrutable as the Godhead; but we know much of that world, and that our will avails something in it; know of God, and that His will avails much more. To say that the Supreme |