acteristics of the reptilian class immediately above
them. And then, after a time, during which the reptile had occupied a
place as inconspicuous as that occupied by the fish in the earlier
periods of animal life, an age of reptiles of vast bulk and high
standing was ushered in. And when, in the lapse of untold ages, _it_
also had passed away, there succeeded an age of great mammals.
Molluscs, fishes, reptiles, mammals, had each in succession their
periods of vast extent; and then there came a period that differed even
more, in the character of its master-existence, from any of these
creations, than they, with their many vitalities, had differed from the
previous inorganic period in which life had not yet begun to be. The
human period began--the period of a fellow-worker with God, created in
God's own image. The animal existences of the previous ages formed, if I
may so express myself, mere figures in the landscapes of the great
garden which they inhabited. Man, on the other hand, was placed in it to
"keep and to dress it;" and such has been the effect of his labours,
that they have altered and improved the face of whole continents. Our
globe, even as it might be seen from the moon, testifies, over its
surface, to that unique nature of man, unshared in by any of the
inferior animals, which renders him, in things physical and natural, a
fellow-worker with the Creator who first produced it. And of the
identity of at least his intellect with that of his Maker, and, of
consequence, of the integrity of the revelation which declares that he
was created in God's own image, we have direct evidence in his ability
of not only conceiving of God's contrivances, but even of reproducing
them; and this, not as a mere imitator, but as an original thinker. He
may occasionally borrow the principles of his contrivances from the
works of the Original Designer, but much more frequently, in studying
the works of the Original Designer does he discover in them the
principles of his own contrivances. He has not been an imitator: he has
merely been exercising, with resembling results, the resembling mind,
_i.e._, the mind made in the Divine image. But the existing scene of
things is not destined to be the last. High as it is, it is too low and
too imperfect to be regarded as God's finished work: it is merely one of
the _progressive_ dynasties; and Revelation and the implanted instincts
of our nature alike teach us to anticipate a glorious _termina