ome peculiarities,
as, for instance, the early appearance of a highly developed flora,
and the special mention of great reptiles in the work of the fifth
day, which correspond with the significant fact that high types of
structure appeared at the very introduction of each new group of
organized beings--a fact which, more than any other in geology, shows
that, in the organic department, elevation has always been a strictly
_creative_ work, and that there is in the constitution of animal
species no innate tendency to elevation, but that on the contrary we
should rather suspect a tendency to degeneracy and ultimate
disappearance, requiring that the fiat of the Creator should after a
time go out again to "renew the face of the earth." In the natural as
in the moral world, the only law of progress is the will and the power
of God. In one sense, however, progress in the organic world has been
dependent on, though not caused by, progress in the inorganic. We see
in geology many grounds for believing that each new tribe of animals
or plants was introduced just as the earth became fitted for it; and
even in the present world we see that regions composed of the more
ancient rocks, and not modified by subsequent disturbances, present
few of the means of support for man and the higher animals; while
those districts in which various revolutions of the earth have
accumulated fertile soils or deposited useful minerals are the chief
seats of civilization and population. In like manner we know that
those regions which the Bible informs us were the cradle of the human
race and the seats of the oldest nations are geologically among the
most recent parts of the existing continents, and were no doubt
selected by the Creator partly on that account for the birthplace of
man. We thus find that the Bible and the geologists are agreed not
only as to the fact and order of progress, but also as to its manner
and use.

3. Both records agree in affirming that since the beginning there has
been but one great system of nature. We can imagine it to have been
otherwise. Our existing nature might have been preceded by a state of
things having no connection with it. The arrangements of the earth's
surface might have been altogether different; races of creatures might
have existed having no affinity with or resemblance to those of the
present world, and we might have been able to trace no present
beneficial consequences as flowing from these past states o