CHAPTER IX. It is revolting to reason, and therefore to true philosophy, to observe, how strenuously physical science, though expatiating in the wonders of Creation, has laboured to exclude the Creator from the details of His own Work, straining every nerve of ingenuity to ascribe them all to secondary causes; and, with what undisguised relief of thought, it exchanges the idea of God, for the idea of Nature1! Can it be aware, that in so doing it is moving in the very direction which leads, and which ever has led, to materialism, practical if not systematical; and therefore, in the very opposite direction to that in which Bacon and Newton, of whom it makes its boast, always moved? And, that in every degree in which it despoils the Creator, in order to furnish the fiction which it extols under the unmeaning term of Nature, it in the same degree disclaims the philosophy of Bacon and Newton, and sanctions the doctrine of Epicurean atheism? for, the atheism of Epicurus was not a denial of Deity, but a denial of the action and interference of Deity. How different was the proceeding of Newton! who declared, "When I wrote my treatise about 1 See above, note to p. 105. 66 our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity1:" that is, an intelligent, interfering, and operating Deity. Hence it was, that he taught: "HÆC OMNIA, simili consilio constructa, "suberunt UNIUS dominio: -HIC omnia regit, 66 66 non ut Anima Mundi, sed ut universorum Do"minus; et propter dominium suum, Dominus "Deus Пavrongarog dici solet. Nam Deus est vox relativa, et ad servos refertur; et deitas ac dominatio Dei, non in corpus proprium, uti sentiunt quibus Deus est anima mundi, sed in “servos3.—ALL THESE THINGS, constructed by the same Wisdom, are subject to the dominion of ONE "alone. HE, rules them all; not as a soul of the world, but as the Lord and Master of the "universe; and, on account of his own proper dominion, He is called, the Lord God Almighty. For God, is a relative term; and relates to servants, or ministers; and the godship and domina"tion of God is, not over His own frame, as those supposed who considered Him only as the soul of the world; but, over His servants or ministers." 66 66 66 46 But, does the mineral geology exhibit any demonstration, that it "has an eye upon any "such principles" in the management of its science? It is with much concern that I have to adduce, 1 First Letter to BENTLEY. 2 Princip. Math. lib. iii. Schol. General. in proof of the justice of the preceding remarks, the very recent, and in a merely scientific point of view, the very wonderful" Essay on the Superposition of Rocks in both Hemi 66 spheres." Yet, that work is not so wonderful for the unparalleled labour which it evinces, and for the vast comprehension of its physical combinations, as it is for the moral phenomenon which it exhibits: a work, scrutinising the amazing structure of this globe with a minuteness and universality never before attempted; compelled, by its subject, to look back occasionally to the “first period and origin" of that structure; professing, "in presenting the details of the phenomena, to "generalise the ideas respecting them—to connect them with the great questions in Natural Phi 66 66 66 losophy1 — and to trace the first elements of geognostic philosophy;" and yet, without embracing a single reflection rising above the brute matter with which it is engaged; without a single allusion to a divine cause or first principle; without the most transient homage of the mind evinced by the teacher before his pupil; alleging Nature twice or thrice, but propounding no other primary principle of its " philosophy" than that of "development," common to minerals, animals, and vegetables; and therefore, having no eye upon those principles” which Newton kept ever in his view in handling the "great questions of Natural Phi 66 66 66 66 losophy." That such an exclusion is violently artificial, is too manifest to be disguised, because the mind of every one will feel that it is totally unnatural; and, that which is unnatural to the intelligence, can never be philosophical. It appears to be resorted to, from a rising sense of the absurdity of chaotic geology; and from a vain expectation, that a negative course, excluding the absurdity, will alone establish rationality. But, this will not do. The point must now be determined positively; and this we have effected, by means of the demonstrative truth to which we have attained that the primitive formations in all the three kingdoms were perfectly analogous, with respect to the completeness originally imparted to them by their divine efficient Cause. "An undevout Astronomer is mad!" said our moral poet, in an age when astronomy was the branch of natural philosophy that chiefly excited the interest of science. Had he lived in our days, to see that interest extended to the amazing field of geological research, he might have pronounced, with equal poetical force and justness, "An undevout Geologist is mad!" It is in vain for the mineral geology to say, that it presupposes a First Intelligent Cause; and therefore, that it is unnecessary to propound it. It is indispensably necessary to propound it, like Newton; and not only to propound it, but to proclaim it, like him; and not only to proclaim it once, and then to have done with it, but to recur to it repeatedly and constantly, like him, as a first principle never to be lost sight of; that in so intricate and dangerous a labyrinth, the mind may hold fast by it as a clue never to be relinquished: lest, if it should once lose that clue, it should stray further and further from the only secure road, into the gloomy entanglements of error; and should become ultimately lost, in all the horrors of moral darkness. He who professes to teach the first elements of a science, is understood to ground it upon the first principle which he propounds; and, when that science embraces one-third part of terrestrial creation; when the first principle which it propounds, is only nature and her chemistry, or nature and development; when that nature is personified, and creative acts (which are intelligent acts) are ascribed to it; such doctrine is fundamentally unscientific and unphilosophical, if brought to the test of Bacon and Newton, and essentially profane and impious, if brought to the test of Revelation. Nor is it sufficient to denounce and disclaim it generally, as being "confined to those who have presumed to compose theories of the "earth in the infancy of the science1," and then to dismiss it from the thought, as unworthy of its entertainment; which only marks individual superiority; it is necessary, on the contrary, it is 1 Vindic. Geologica, p. 22. |