various combinations of Mechanism, multiplied
almost to infinity in their details of application,
yet all constructed on the same few common
fundamental principles which pervade the living
forms of organized Beings, that we reasonably
conclude all these past and present contrivances
to be parts of a comprehensive and connected
whole, originating in the Will and Power of one
and the same Creator.
Had the number or nature of the material
Elements appeared to have been different under
former conditions of the Earth, or had the Laws
which have regulated the phenomena of inorganic
matter, been subjected to change at various
Epochs, during the progress of the many
formations of which Geology takes cognizance,
there might indeed have been proofs of Wisdom
and Power in such unconnected phenomena, but
they would have been insufficient to demonstrate
the Unity and Universal Agency of the same
eternal and supreme First Cause of all things.
Again, had Geology gone no further than to
prove the existence of multifarious examples of
Design, its evidences would indeed have been
decisive against the Atheist; but if such Design
had been manifested only by distinct and dissimilar
systems of Organization, and independent
Mechanisms, connected together by no analogies,
and bearing no relations to one another, or to any
existing types in the Animal or Vegetable king*
doms, these demonstrations of Design, although
affording evidence of Intelligence and Power,
would not have proved a common origin in the
Will of one and the same Creator ; and the Polytheist
might have appealed to such non-ac-
cordant and inharmonious systems, as affording
indications of the agency of many independent
Intelligences, and as corroborating his theory of
a plurality of Gods.
But the argument which would infer an Unity
of cause, from unity of effects, repeated through
various and complex systems of organization
widely remote from each other in time and place
and circumstances, applies with accumulative
force, when we not only can expand the details of
facts on which it is founded, over the entire surface
of the present world, but are enabled to
comprehend in the same category all the various
extinct forms of many preceding systems of organization,
which we find entombed within the
bowels of the Earth. It was well observed by
Paley, respecting the variations we find in living
species of Plants and Animals, in distant regions
and under various climates, that “ We never get
amongst such original or totally different modes
of Existence, as to indicate that we are come into
the province of a different Creator, or under the
direction of a different W ill” * And the very
* Paley Nat. Theol. p. 450. Chap., on the Unity of the Deity.