still seen at
work to the same effect.

To bring these truths the more nearly before us, it is possible to make
a substance resembling basalt in a furnace; limestone and sandstone have
both been formed from suitable materials in appropriate receptacles; the
phenomena of cleavage have, with the aid of electricity, been simulated
on a small scale, and by the same agent crystals are formed. In short,
the remark which was made regarding the indifference of the cosmical
laws to the scale on which they operated is to be repeated regarding the
geological.

A common furnace will sometimes exemplify the operation of forces which
have produced the Giant's Causeway; and in a sloping ploughed field
after rain we may often observe, at the lower end of a furrow, a handful
of washed and neatly deposited mud or sand, capable of serving as an
illustration of the way in which Nature has produced the deltas of the
Nile and Ganges. In the ripple-marks on sandy beaches of the present day
we see Nature's exact repetition of the operations by which she
impressed similar features on the sandstones of the carboniferous era.
Even such marks as wind-slanted rain would in our day produce on
tide-deserted sands have been read upon tablets of the ancient strata.

It is the same Nature--that is to say, God through or in the manner of
Nature--working everywhere and in all time, causing the wind to blow,
and the rain to fall, and the tide to ebb and flow, inconceivable ages
before the birth of our race, as now. So also we learn from the conifers
of those old ages that there were winter and summer upon earth, before
any of us lived to liken the one to all that is genial in our own
nature, or to say that the other breathed no airs so unkind as man's
ingratitude. Let no one suppose there is any necessary disrespect for
the Creator in thus tracing His laws in their minute and familiar
operations. There is really no true great and small, grand and familiar,
in Nature. Such only appear when we thrust ourselves in as a point from
which to start in judging. Let us pass, if possible, beyond immediate
impressions, and see all in relation to Cause, and we shall chastenedly
admit that the whole is alike worshipful.

The Creator, then, is seen to have formed our earth, and effected upon
it a long and complicated series of changes, in the same manner in which
we find that he conducts the affairs of Nature before our living eyes;
that is, in the manner of natural