, through
evidence furnished by the rocks, with the remarkable fact, that the
Creator imparted to man the Divine image before he united to man's the
Divine nature.

LECTURE SIXTH.

GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES.

PART II.

Up till the introduction of man upon our planet, the humbler creatures,
his predecessors, formed but mere figures in its various landscapes, and
failed to alter or affect by their works the face of nature. They were
conspicuous, not from what they _did_, but from what they _were_. At a
very early period reefs of coral, the work of minute zoophytes, whitened
the shallows of the ocean, or encircled with pale, ever broadening
frames, solitary islands green with the shrubs and trees of extinct
floras; but, though products of the animal world, they were not built up
under the direction of even an instinctive intelligence, but were as
entirely the results of a _vegetative_ process of mere growth as the
forests or reed brakes of the old Carboniferous savannahs. At a later
time an ant hill might be here and there descried, rearing its squat,
brown pyramid amid the recesses of some Oolitic forest; or, in a period
still more recent, the dam of the gigantic beaver might be seen
extending its minute eye-like circlet of blue amid the windings of some
bosky ravine of the Pliocene age; or existing as a little mound-skirted
pond, with the rude half-submerged _cottage_ of the creature, its
architect, rising beside it, on some rivulet of the Pleistocene. But how
inconsiderable such works, compared with the wide extent of prospect in
which they were included! How entirely inconspicuous rather, save when
placed in the immediate foreground of the pictures into whose
composition they entered! Not until the introduction of man upon earth
do we find a creature whose works sensibly affect and modify the aspects
of nature. But when man appears, how mighty the change which he effects!
Immediately on his creation he takes under his care the vegetable
productions of use and show: it becomes his business to keep and dress a
garden. He next becomes a tiller of fields, then a planter of vineyards:
here he cuts down great forests; there he rears extensive woods. He
makes himself places of habitation; and busy cities spring up as the
trophies of his diligence and skill. His labors, as they grow upon the
waste, affect the appearance of vast continents; until at length, from
many a hill-top and tall spire, s