CHAPTER III.
ANALOGICAL ORDER—PHYSICAL AND MORAL—OF PROGRESSION.
The author of the “Vestiges” devotes two chapters to what he terms general and particular considerations respecting the origin of the animated tribes. He regards it as a thing completely demonstrated, or as requiring so little proof as to be taken for granted, that the inorganic elements all took together by a process of natural law, which Deity was not required to superintend, but simply to begin. He supposes, hypothetically, that this also would be the case with the organic structures, that, in the originating of the first tribes, God supplied the materials, and that natural law assimilated and fashioned them into their different orders and families. This might be predicated of the Creator, he fancies, as the mode in which he would act; and by removing him a step away from his own works, and allowing all the subsequent genera and species of the epochs of geology to go out and to come in according to the same process, his special interference in such arrangements is rendered unnecessary; and the greater honor is reflected upon operations in themselves so complicated and vast, and yet all so minutely, orderly, and prospectively ordained.
We need not employ more than a sentence in reply to this mode of reasoning. Hypothetically I would say, if God was to create a world at all, and to store it with living creatures, he would do all these things directly of Himself. He created every individual particle of the original matter, in all their infinitesimally minute and myriad atoms. We do not know how, nor the manner thereof. But every one of them required his special interference singly, as in combination and a whole; and had not Deity so specially acted with the parts as with the mass in willing them into being, none of them, of any kind or quality, would have been in existence.—Why not the same manner of creating as to the species, genera, and orders of the animated tribes? These required not less His direct personal interference than the elementary particles and minims out of which they were formed; and superintendence in the one case is as dignified, if the term may be so applied, as in the other. Admit the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Deity—and the author admits them all—and any other mode of reasoning is wholly nugatory—as useless in science as it is inadmissible in fact—as inconsistent with the subtilties of the profoundest analysis as with the conclusions of the most confiding theology.
But the creation of the world by God being admitted, it is no less true, and it is equally a necessary truth, that the arrangement and disposition of its parts, the order and succession of its events, are each immediately an effect of the great First Cause. As no material substance could originate itself, so neither could it impart the principle of life, or construct the organization through which that principle is manifested and maintained in the exercise of its functions. Equally impossible is it for the course of events, the motion of the elements, the growth of plants and animals, and all those subtile processes in nature by which objects are produced and distinguished, each after their kind, to be the results of chance, or of any inherent, underived properties existing in the things themselves. Whether God acts mediately by a course of nature originally established, or immediately and constantly, by the same divine agency which produced all things at first, and impressed upon each its peculiar properties, may be a question in philosophy, but none in theology. We indeed may speculate respecting the manner of the Divine acting, and may speak of that manner as the laws according to which the system of nature proceeds; but we cannot doubt the source whence the chain of events takes its rise, or wherefore it is that there are order and regularity in the arrangements of the universe. And while everything is of God, and the course of nature precisely such as He intends upon whom the whole is dependent, it is interesting to find the closest analogy subsisting between the actings of the Divine Being in every department of his supreme and universal government. The scheme of revelation manifests itself to be of God, not only by the peculiar testimony of prophesy and miracle to which it appeals, but by the resemblance which it bears, in the order and character of its dispensations, to the established constitution of creation and providence;—so intimate and striking as, in fact, to leave no doubt, in every impartial mind, that the author of the one must be the author of both.
We have already stated that a progression is manifested in the order and arrangement of the rocky masses which compose the earth’s crust—in the nature and qualities of its mineral contents—and in the various revolutions which are indicated by the fossil organic remains that lie entombed in the strata of the interior. Take the most useful of all the sections of the earth’s crust, namely, what is denominated the carboniferous or coal formation, here we have a regular sequence or series of beds resting one upon another, and all so disposed, from the lowest to the highest, as to be most suitably adapted for reaching and bringing to the surface the inclosed treasure. Nor did nature all at once bring to maturity those prodigious masses of plants and vegetables of which this wonderful deposit is composed. Her flora seems to have been upon a limited scale at first, until the earth, being prepared for its accumulation and preservation, throws from its teeming bosom, with a profusion unknown before or since, the vegetable matter out of which our coal is formed. Consider, again, the dip and dislocation of the strata connected with it, and you have a proof of a new order of causes being brought, subsequently, into operation, before coal could be available for man’s use. Examine, next, the vast accumulations which repose upon the coal—the curious relics which are imbedded in them—the evidences thereby afforded of relative changes in the sea and land—of the elevation of mountains, the denudation and formation of valleys—and you cannot fail to infer, from all this, that the surface of the earth was not always as it now is; that there was a period when man could not have existed on it; and that for him who was the last in the order of all God’s creations, it was gradually and progressively prepared as a suitable habitation.
When, again, we advert to the course of creation, there is a gradual progression from the little to the great, from the insignificant, if we may apply such a term comparatively to any of the works of God, to the noble and the grand. Each of the links that compose the mighty chain is perfect in its kind; each serves to connect and illustrate the link that borders next to it; each is adapted to its place in the system, so that the lowest could not be exalted, nor could the highest be brought down, to answer the purposes of any inferior member of the series. A pebble has more attraction to the eye than any of the colorless particles which compose the soil; but from the pebble the fruits of the earth can derive no nourishment. The lichen or the moss which adheres to the solid rock may be inferior in beauty and attraction to the lily of the valley, or the lofty cedars of Lebanon; but the latter will not grow in the barren regions of the north, and without the former, hundreds of insect and animal tribes would perish. Man constitutes the principal link in the chain of visible creation; he is higher than the highest of the animal race; and do not the superior endowments and blessings of man, however eminent in themselves, appear still more eminent and valuable by contrasting them with the inferior powers, the ruder enjoyments, the meaner and more sordid passions, of the lower creatures? which yet amply display the wisdom and goodness of their Author, both in their frame and state, in the relation which they have, and the connection which they hold with the orders above and below them. Looking upward, again, what is man but a lower link of that chain of beings which, like its Author, reacheth through immensity? Thousands, nay, millions of spiritual orders may possibly fill up the chasm, if that be possible, between the human and Divine nature, and who, by the very contrast with man’s estate, may have a juster knowledge and a more grateful relish of their own refined and spiritual natures. Take away, indeed, “the human face divine,” and there would be one note of praise less in the great temple of Jehovah; but, while angels could not fulfill the purposes of man in the order of creation, the perfections of the Godhead are infinitely more exalted by their activity in a purer sphere—their keener visions and juster apprehensions—their unclouded faculties—and their sublime and lofty contemplations, all corresponding with the clearer manifestations of divine truth, light, and glory, vouchsafed to them.
Descend, in short, as low, or rise as high as we may, in the scale of being, we will still find something inferior, something superior; and not more remote from each other in the extreme points are the minims of nature intimated to us by the microscope, and the magnificent systems above which the telescope has disclosed to view, than are the wonderful differences and infinite range subsisting among living organized substances, from the vegetable to the animal, from the irrational to the intellectual, and from the intellectual to the spiritual and divine. But one class cannot complain of the superior advantages of the class above it. The constitutions of all are precisely adapted to their respective places in the scheme of things, and the desires of all, according to their various capacities, are suitably gratified. Each is happy in its sphere, and still subservient to the higher happiness of others. The garden is the insect’s paradise, man is lord of the brute creation, angels are principalities and powers when compared to the knowledge and the happiness of man. “Consider,” says the author of “Paradise Lost,”
“that great
Or bright infers not excellence: the earth