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We live in a vast graveyard. Since the first creation of animals, year after year, in an increasing ratio, have countless numbers of living beings died, and gone to repose in this vast cemetery. Not just beneath the surface alone do we find evidences of this, but deep down in the crust of the globe we discover innumerable multitudes of the remains of beings that once had life. The huge masses of rock lying piled one above another, are but consecutive doors to the sepulchres of untold generations-sepulchres in which individuality is almost lost in the overwhelming numbers. Let us go on, for it is vain to pause to make calculations.

If the insects alone that have, since the creation, sported away their brief hour in the sunbeam, or have crawled along the ground, were collected, and their dead bodies strewed upon the surface of the earth, they would probably cover it with a thick layer. Add to these the vast multitudes of the lower orders of animals, and the quantity will be enormously swelled. If then we take the bodies of animals of the higher orders, and bury them, each in an individual grave, the whole earth would present an uninterrupted series of mounds. The tombs of the human family are but a speck in this wide-spread world of tombs, and numberless as they have been, they would scarcely be an appreciable addition to the amount of the living creatures that

rank below him, which are now dead. In what an immense Golgotha do we live! Every footstep towards the tomb is upon a grave!

Besides those which have left their traces behind them, what multitudes have there been that have disappeared, leaving no record or evidence of their existence! Spread over the surface of the earth, and exposed to atmospheric influences, they have passed rapidly to decay, and their very bones have mouldered back to dust. Such unquestionably has been the fact with those races of post-diluvian animals, whose bones are occasionally found in marl beds, or in the lakes and along the valleys of the great west. They have once roamed in vast herds over the plains and through the forests of this country, animals of giant proportions, more terrible to the aborigines than a marshalled army; but now they are all gone, and have left only here and there a few bones, to testify to the wonderful beings of the past. Could one of these relics speak, what tales would it not tell of the marvels of past life, upon the surface of a world now thrown into confusion and disorder by mighty convulsions, or buried under the drift of a universal deluge.

It would be instructive, and perhaps useful, in connection with this subject, if we could have a better understanding of that mysterious something called LIFE-its peculiar deve班

lopments in beings of different forms and structures-its powers and durability in simple individuals, or transmitted through the countless families of a race that has increased in numbers and in physical strength for ages, and then diminished through an apparently equal amount of individuals, till eventually it has disappeared. This seems to have been its course in many of the lower orders of animals. Beginning from a mere point in a single pair of a species, it has spread itself through family after family, and generation after generation, till they became as many as the sands of the sea. But here they attained their acme of numbers and strength, and thence fell away and decreased, till the race went out in a point as small as its beginning. Throughout all this length and breadth of reproduction, was the vital force accumulating, gathering strength and intensity, till it reached its culminating point, and then had it attained its maximum of power, so that thenceforward it must inevitably retrograde? Has it been so in all the races of living beings that are now lost? Must the same happen with the human family? These are questions we cannot answer till we know more of what life is, and its peculiar force when exerted upon otherwise inert matter. Yet, could we draw back the curtain that hides from our view the past, and read the mysteries of the bygone ages, what wonders of the great God would be unfolded to us, and with what profound humility and awe should we exclaim-" Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; in wisdom hast thou made them all!"

We are too apt to measure the mind of the Almighty by our finite comprehensions, and to say, because we cannot see the design, that if such and such were the acts and intention of God, it is rather evidence of folly than of wisdom. We do not see all here, and are in danger of yielding up our hearts, as well as our heads, for the enemy to sow them with tares. Men should study nature with sanctified hearts, ready, where reason cannot penetrate, to yield implicit faith to revelation, and believe that what is dark to us, is light to the Infinite Mind. Exhaustless stores of truth lie buried deep in the bosom of the earth, and he who says that the petrified mollusk, thousands of feet down in the solid rock, was created there as it is, bearing the form and presenting every appearance of having been once a living, organized being, made to enjoy life with its myriads of fellow beings, errs as

widely from the truth, as he that attributes its existence there or anywhere else to blind and disorderly chance. Yet such men there are, who give God credit for acts of power with no other definite object than simply to show man what He can do.

Such, however, is not God. His works have always some great and definite end. He did not create the fossils in the rocks merely to be discovered in these ends of the world, and show what God's power was. Not for this did He cause immense masses of flint to be formed of the skeletons of organized beings, too small for the eye to discover, the animalculæ of the water drop; not for this did he mingle with the lime-rocks the huge bones of the Zeuglodon; nor for this did He lay the unused bones of the gigantic animals of a past day, in the bottom of our marl beds. No. Like their living representatives, they once peopled the surface of the earth, or swam in its waters. The sun and the air gladdened them before they took their place in the great cemetery of a buried world, and they now form the hieroglyphics of this book of the history of the past, imperfectly read at present, but opening, day by day, leaf after leaf of most interesting knowledge. It may be one of the studies of heaven to trace out God in His earthly book. It may be one of his plans to glorify himself in eternity, by unrolling and developing to the mind of man, purified and disenthralled, the wonders of a world he lived and died in, and yet knew nothing of with all his study.

A late popular English writer, the author of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," made a great error in trying to renew the antiquated and infidel theory of a progressive generation in animals, by which, from the mere monad, the lowest form of living animal matter, a drop of jelly endowed with life, he supposed improved races gradually to be produced, by a sort of accident. He did not even give to the great God the credit of having established a law by which, after certain times, and under peculiar circumstances, the birth of a new creature of more perfect form and properties must inevitably take place. All improvements were supposed to be the result of accident, in a countless series of generations, and yet we are told of no reason why the accident might not have happened in every generation, for there was no law to secure uniformity.

Such an idea, besides being utterly without

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foundation in fact, and being contradicted by the very facts employed to substantiate it, detracts from the honor of the Almighty, by degrading him to a mere solitary being, who, having once created the universe, and set its wheels in motion, sat down, content to let them move on in an accidental course, till worn out, without ever again thinking them worthy of his notice or his care. Such would have been a wild and disorganized universe, tending in every sweep of its huge revolutions to disastrous ruin.

If, instead of a progressive generation, this sophist had called it a progressive creation, he would have stood upon different ground. He could then have been sustained both by nature and revelation. Here he could have shown the great Creator, day after day, or age after age, gradually, yet perfectly, unfolding and developing his magnificent plans. Thus he would open the book of revelation, and trace the gradual work through each rising and declining day. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and then, day by day, he advanced, in a rising scale, to perfection. Let us follow the path of this great former, and note the beauty, as briefly as possible, of the gradation.

On the first day he made light, and divided the day from the night. On the second day he separated the great parts of our planetary system; and on the third, dividing the land from the water, he now for the first time shows us life in its humblest form. On this day he caused plants to appear. Now the world began to put on beauty. First, in the waters appear the many forms of sea weed, creeping along the bottom, or waving their slender and graceful stems and leaves to the gentle undulations of the waves. In damp and cool spots, mosses crept along the ground. On the rock, the lichen spread out its uncouth leaves, and pierced the crevices with its roots. Then followed the taller ferns, and grasses, and the waving grain, and kindred plants. On the lofty hills, and beside every river and fountain, sprang up the green and graceful palm tree, and the tall and magnificent treefern, waving its feathery leaves in the wind; and plants with broad expanded foliage. Thus progressively they sprang up, till earth was covered with a most luxuriant vegetation; and what was, but now, a desolate and dreary expanse of useless soil, became a blooming and fruitful garden. Flowers of all hues sent out their perfume on the loaded

air, and earth was paradise! And this was wisdom, for, two days hence, must spring into life the myriad forms of animals, in air and sea and land, and food must be provided for them. On the fourth day he made the great lights; and on the fifth

Lo! morning breaks! and as the sun's first beams fall on the world, down by the water, in its shallow edge, floats the soft gelatinous mollusk, and there a kindred one, covered with a shell; and here, and there, and everywhere, as the day advances, throughout all the vast watery expanse, comes forth the evervaried form of shell fish, beautiful in shape and every shade of color, glistening and sparkling in the sun, and moving about in joy! The whole world of waters is instinct with life. Lo! darting arrow-like through the liquid depths, the fish of every size and shape, born in full growth and vigor! Down in the ocean depths, Leviathan with his kindred races, and monsters man never dreamed of till he disinterred their bones from their tombs, that have been locked up for thousands of years! In the estuaries, and the muddy pool, and along the river's margin, crawling upon its banks in the shade of the thick willows, and plunging heavily in the waves, were the uncouth forms of the alligator and crocodile. The gigantic seal was there, a hundred feet in length; and many a creature, in the mixed form of beast, and bird, and fish; each form of living being, as it appears, approaching the more perfect creation of tomorrow. Yonder, on the waves, lie the huge whales, sporting by thousands, and lashing the ocean into foam in mad frolic, and spouting briny floods into the air.

Mid-day. Behold, up from the sea, and lake, and stream, from every fountain and rill, in endless beauty, and profusion, and size, and brilliant plumage, and bewildering song, rise the swarming birds! Circling wildly through the air, or perched on every tree, and bush, and flowering shrub-wandering by the river's brim, or floating on its glassy surface, filling the air with melody and song, they rejoice in their new life. And thus the day passes, each moment bringing into life some new and wondrous form, till darkness again settles down, like a pall, upon the new world. All is hushed and still, save the occasional song of the night bird, or the sportive splash of the wakeful sea monster, as he throws himself from the water, to fall back sluggish upon the sleeping sea.

Another morning breaks, the second upon a living world. Forth from the earth come, one by one, the animals that are to people it. The insect races, teeming with life and vigor, crawl along the ground, or sport on the wing in the sunbeam, with joyous hum. The quadrupeds follow, each new form improved upon the one just past. The long procession passes on, led by the majestic horse, whose neck is clothed with thunder. Then goes. Behemoth, "the chief of the ways of God," that "drinketh up a river and hasteth not." Then follow him the elephant and the gigantic mastodon, moving on, conscious of their stately strength; and near them the mild gazelle and the nimble antelope. All forms and shapes of animal

life are springing up from the inert clay, and revelling in happiness. Last of all, proudest and most perfect, man appears, erect and dignified, the form and likeness of God-the end and aim of all this progressive creation, from the lowest form of life in the sea weed and the monad, up through all the gradations which have been thus hastily traced, and constantly approaching the type of a perfect creature, in man.

Such is the history given by revelation. We hope hereafter to show how beautifully and truly the developments of late discoveries confirm this history. And we hope thus to vindicate the glory and honor of the great God, the Creator.

A VISION of beauty burst upon the soul of Jacob, as he laid his head upon a stone, and dreamed. He was a lone wanderer in the world, flying from a brother whom he had defrauded of his birthright, and whose vengeance he feared.

Yet he had his father's blessing. More sad would his heart have been that night, had he felt a father's curse upon him. But Isaac had blessed him; and trusting in the God of Isaac and of his father Abraham, Jacob lay down to sleep in the open air. The night was his pavillion, the stars his lamps, the earth his couch, his pillow a stone.

"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And behold the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of."

We think of heaven, the home of the an

gels and of the peculiar presence of the Infinite, as away in the blue vaulted sky that curtains the world we live in; and he who has steadily fixed his eye upon the deep expanse, and gazed intently upwards, has felt that there is room there for worlds innumerable, far out of the reach of human vision or human thought. Where heaven is, it matters not. But the revelation which Jacob's vision brings to us is this: that heaven is near, and its glory is within the scope of the eye of faith!

The believer, trusting in the God of the father of the faithful, shuts his eye upon the world he lives in, and opens it instantly on a better, even an heavenly country. He may be, like Jacob, a homeless and friendless wanderer, with the certainty that he has here no continuing city but when the goodly land of promise rises to his view, he knows that there is his possession and his home.

He may be a friendless wanderer, but the angels come down from their bright abodes, and minister unto him as one of the heirs of salvation whom they are sent to serve. Backwards and forwards do they wing their way, to show him that the avenues to glory are free to him who has a title to its joys, and his winged spirit rises with the angels and anticipates its rest.

Long it may have been since the voice of kindness fell on his ear; but he hears the voice of God, and its tones are full of melody,