CHAPTER XXIV.[1]
Conclusion.
In our last Chapter we have considered the Nature of the Evidence afforded by unorganized mineral bodies, in proof of the existence of design in the original adaptation of the material Elements to their various functions, in the inorganic and organic departments of the Natural World, and have seen that the only sufficient Explanation we can discover, of the orderly and wonderful dispositions of the material Elements "in measure and number and weight," throughout the terraqueous globe, is that which refers the origin of everything above us, and beneath us, and around us, to the will and workings of One Omnipotent Creator. If the properties imparted to these Elements at the moment of their Creation, adapted them beforehand to the infinity of complicated useful purposes, which they have already answered, and may have further still to answer, under many successive Dispensations in the material World, such an aboriginal constitution so far from superseding an intelligent Agent, would only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and power, that could comprehend such an infinity of future uses under future systems, in the original groundwork of his Creation.
In an early part of our Inquiry, we traced back the his-
- ↑ In the first Section of his fourth Chapter the same author has also so clearly shown the great extent to which several of the most common mineral substances e. g. lime, magnesia, and iron, eater into the composition of animal and vegetable bodies, and has so fully set forth the evidences of design in the constitution and properties of the few simple substances, viz. fifty-four Elementary principles, into some one or more of which the component materials of all the three great kingdoms of Nature can be resolved, that I deem it superfluous to repeat in another form, the substance of arguments which have been so well and fully drawn by my learned Colleague, from those phenomena of the mineral Elements, which form no small part of the evidence afforded by the Chemistry of Mineralogy, in proof of the Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness of the Creator.
