And is it not very beautiful to see how God has made one part of His
creation dependent upon another, and all dependent upon Him? Does it not
show us His care for His creatures, and especially for that wonderful
creature--the last and best of all, who was created for the earth and the
earth for him--when we see, as we have seen so constantly, that before the
inhabitants of earth, air, and sea came into being, He had caused the earth
to bring forth that which should give to every living thing the means of
sustaining life?
I have called this chapter, which does not speak of the work of God on any
special Day of Creation, THE STONE BOOK. A wonderful book it is for those
who can read it; its leaves are the successive layers of the earth's crust;
its letters are not only the remains of plants, but the fossil-shells and
bones of animals imprisoned there, which tell us that creatures, all in
some way unlike any we now know, once lived and died, and are still to be
found, not in their ancient forms in rushy mere of tangled jungle, but in
"graves of stone and monuments of marble."
When we were speaking of the coal-mines I told you something about
the remains of giant ferns, sedges, reeds, and mare's-tails of far
larger growth than any now known, which have been found there. You are
familiar with fossil-plants, but I do not think we have spoken much
of fossil-animals, which are found in all except the oldest layers of
rock--the first pages of the "Stone Book.
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