population, riches, and power, and of improvement in almost every Art which administers to the necessities and comforts of Mankind. And, however remote may have been the periods, at which these materials of future beneficial dispensations were laid up in store, we may fairly assume, that, besides the immediate purposes effected at, or before the time of their deposition in the strata of the Earth, an ulterior prospective view to the future uses of Man, formed part of the design, with which they were, ages ago, disposed in a manner so admirably adapted to the benefit of the Human Race.
CHAPTER XX.
Proofs of Design in the Effects of Disturbing Forces on the Strata of the Earth.
In the proofs of the agency of a wise, and powerful, and benevolent Creator, which we have derived from the Animal and Vegetable kingdoms, the evidence has rested chiefly on the prevalence of Adaptations and Contrivances, and of Mechanisms adapted to the production of certain ends, throughout the organic remains of a former world.
An argument of another kind may be founded on the Order,
Symmetry, and Constancy, of the Crystalline forms of
the unorganized Mineral ingredients of the Earth. But in
considering the great geological phenomena which appear
in the disposition of the strata, and their various accidents,
a third kind of evidence arises from conditions of the earth,
chinery, which can be kept in action only by the produce of our native Coal Mines, and whose prosperity can never survive the period of their exhaustion.
