part of their theory:--"In the planetary
motions, where geometry has carried the eye so far, both into the future
and the past, we discover no mark either of the commencement or
termination of the present order. It is unreasonable, indeed, to suppose
that such marks should anywhere exist. The Author of Nature has not
given laws to the universe, which, like the institutions of men, carry
in themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not
permitted in His works any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign
by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. _He
may put an end, as he no doubt gave a beginning_, to the present system,
at some determinate period of time; but we may rest assured that this
great catastrophe will not be brought about by the laws now existing,
and that it is not indicated, by any thing which we perceive."[107]

The party feeling excited against the Huttonian doctrines, and the open
disregard of candor and temper in the controversy, will hardly be
credited by the reader, unless he recalls to his recollection that the
mind of the English public was at that time in a state of feverish
excitement. A class of writers in France had been laboring industriously
for many years, to diminish the influence of the clergy, by sapping the
foundations of the Christian faith; and their success, and the
consequences of the Revolution, had alarmed the most resolute minds,
while the imagination of the more timid was continually haunted by dread
of innovation, as by the phantom of some fearful dream.

_Voltaire._--Voltaire had used the modern discoveries in physics as one
of the numerous weapons of attack and ridicule directed by him against
the Scriptures. He found that the most popular systems of geology were
accommodated to the sacred writings, and that much ingenuity had been
employed to make every fact coincide exactly with the Mosaic account of
the creation and deluge. It was, therefore, with no friendly feelings
that he contemplated the cultivators of geology in general, regarding
the science as one which had been successfully enlisted by theologians
as an ally in their cause.[108] He knew that the majority of those who
were aware of the abundance of fossil shells in the interior of
continents, were still persuaded that they were proofs of the universal
deluge; and as the readiest way of shaking this article of faith, he
endeavored to inculcate skepticism as to the real natur