surface of this earth? Or, Is it to perpetuate the progress of that
system, which, in other respects, appears to be contrived with so much
wisdom? Here are questions which a Theory of the Earth must solve; and
here indeed, must be found the most material part by far of any Theory
of the Earth. For, as we are more immediately concerned with the
operations of the surface, it is the revolutions of that surface which
forms, for us, the most interesting subject of inquiry.

Thus we are led to inquire into the final cause of things, while we
investigate an operation of such magnitude and importance, as is that of
forming land of sea, and sea of land, of apparently reversing nature,
and of destroying that which is so admirably adapted to its purpose. Was
it the work of accident, or effect of an occasional transaction, that
by which the sea had covered our land? Or, Was it the intention of that
Mind which formed the matter of this globe, which endued that matter
with its active and its passive powers, and which placed it with so much
wisdom among a numberless collection of bodies, all moving in a system?
If we admit the first, the consequence of such a supposition would be to
attribute to chance the constitution of this world, in which the systems
of life and sense, of reason and intellect, are necessarily maintained.
If again we shall admit, that there is intention in the cause by which
the present earth had been removed from the bottom of the sea, we may
then inquire into the nature of that system in which a habitable earth,
possessed of beauty, arranged in order, and preserved with economy, had
been formed by the mixture and combination of the different elements,
and made to rise out of the wreck of a former world.

In examining the structure of our earth, we find it no less evidently
formed of loose and incoherent materials, than that those materials had
been collected from different parts, and gathered together at the bottom
of the sea. Consequently, if this continent of land, first collected in
the sea, and then raised above its surface, is to remain a habitable
earth, and to resist the moving waters of the globe, certain degrees
of solidity or consolidation must be given to that collection of loose
materials; and certain degrees of hardness must be given to bodies which
were soft or incoherent, and consequently so extremely perishable in the
situation where they now are placed.

But, at the same time that this earth mus